


The Three Phantoms

by Thimblerig



Series: Music and Moonlight and Your Own Heart's Blood [1]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Opera, Alternate Universe - Revolution and Revolutionaries, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Disabled Character, Disfigurement, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gothic, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Non-Graphic Violence, Romance, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 10:39:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 55
Words: 82,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13098369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: Yes, the Opera Ghost really existed.I interviewed many present at the time of those sensationalised events, though most have sworn me to secrecy. I have documents, available for your perusal on request, from the hands of relevant parties.And I have seen with my own eyes the skeleton of a man found when they dug into the foundations of the great Paris Opera House. I have seen how he lies. I have seen the rings on his hand.And if you don't believe me, go look for yourself...Chapter 54. After and After and After





	1. Act 1: Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anathema Device (notowned)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notowned/gifts).



> Author's Note: The thing about talking about a text with a friend from another fandom, is sometimes you get inspired to do a fusion of both. And then you egg each other on. I’m a piecemeal writer so you’re going to have to read by the chapter, but I’m really looking forward to what Anathema Device does with the same theme.
> 
> For those coming to this from Musketeers, I'm taking my plots mostly from the original book by Gaston Leroux over the popular musical (hence the Persian). For Phantom lovers, the recent bbc Musketeers series has about as much relation to the books as the Lloyd Webber musical does to… In any case, I'm taking shocking liberties with both canons but I hope you enjoy.

_Build deep to rise high, the builders knew._

_When they came to build Paris an opera house, to craft out of stone a song and a salutation, first they dug. They dug into the earth and hammered the rock and, when the water came, they dug a basin to hold it still and silent, that the secret currents of the Seine would not disturb what they had built. They laid stone upon stone and in the strong, beautiful building they made, rich in candlelight and song, most who lived there forgot the water underneath, that they dwelt in a house without a bottom._

Porthos Nikbin felt grit shift under the sole of his boot, and shifted his weight carefully. The dusty tin dark-lantern in his hand was burning still, and he directed the little light over dark water. Still. Silent. The light strayed across an array of heavy pillars and up, but it lacked the strength to touch the roof and the simple trapdoor Porthos had lowered himself through. He set the little lantern down, wedging the shutter open, and shrugged out of the fussy-dowdy woolen coat he’d acquired in Paris and unlaced his boots. Placing them by the lantern, he removed a silver hip flask from his trouser pocket and tugged off his Astrakhan cap, running his large, nimble fingers briefly over the clipped curls of the lambskin, before tucking them both inside the folds of his coat.

A hum. A scrap of sound that might be a lost melody, or perhaps a draft of wind... He shrugged and slipped into the water.

The cold of it took his breath away, but Porthos was a strong swimmer and he had seen the original plans. He set out with confidence, arms and legs stroking through the still waters.

Then something reached for him from below - grasping, iron-hard, sinuous as a snake. He writhed in its coils; a kicking foot met flesh and he felt the shudder of flesh. Lungs burning, his head broached the surface and he gasped, kicked again... He heard a man swear, breathless, and he was struck then in the head. His eyes and ears ringing, Porthos struggled again as he was hauled through the icy water, then dumped without gentleness by the side of the lake.

He gasped for air, flopping on his back like a dying fish.

“Go away,” came a voice out of the dark.

“We were friends, once,” he said, still breathless, levering himself upright. Water streamed into his eyes. Under his hand a tube rolled and he picked it up to look at more closely. A pirate’s trick, he remembered, to lie under the water and breathe. Athos had travelled with pirates once. He’d learned their tricks, as he learned tricks from everyone…

But the man was laughing now, breathy huffs of jollity that rolled echoing through the vast chamber. “We were friends, Porthos, in Mazandaran? In the rosy hours?”

Unbidden a memory came to Porthos - the dry packed earth and the smell of it in the heat, sharp glints of bright metal against the red of the lowering sun. Athos, standing still, shoulders hunched, his back to the world -

“We were friends for my part,” he said defiantly. “That hasn’t changed.”

The laughter increased, bawling like a great bell. “I am a poor host,” he heard Athos say. “Shall I make you a nice cup of tea?”

\- the slither across the ground; fine cord that moved as a serpent in the garden -

Porthos shook himself. “No-one would blame you for what happened,” he said. “Not then. But we aren’t in Mazandaran. And you cannot steal _people.”_

“Can I not?” the other asked, civilised, eloquent, and urbane. Blinking the last of the water out of his eyes, growing accustomed to a darkness only barely lightened by his lantern, Porthos thought he saw a darker shade from whence the voice came, the barest hint of a hunched figure. “Did I not?”

“You _shall_ not,” Porthos said grimly, and leaped.

Cloth came away in his hand. The soft bulk of a cloth dummy toppled to the gritty stone. From far away Athos’ voice sounded, thrown from who-knows-where: “The rope to daylight is still there,” he said, low and careless. “For now.” A delicate tinkle of water.

The lantern went out.

Very soft: “You’d best hurry, my friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _a house without a bottom_ \- this is actually true. They couldn’t pump out all the water coming in from the Seine so instead they built a reservoir and pillars to hold up the rest of the foundation, and sealed as much as they could to keep the basements dry for storing scenery. Apparently the Parisian fire department goes there to train in underwater manoeuvres. “House without a bottom,” is a phrase used in the book.
> 
> // According the list of Iranian surnames I picked it from, Nikbin means ‘good vision’ or optimistic.


	2. La Bonacieux Receives a Visit From Three Investigators; The Moribund Gala

La Bonacieux, principal danseuse of the Paris Opera but known to her friends as _Constance,_ sat half-undressed in a gilt, hoop-backed chair in her private dressing room powdering her face and throat and decollete. She considered her reflection carefully - ghost white from the powder, red-lipped, with her eyebrows painted in strongly and lines that extended her eyes, that the audience might see them from the gods, under a crown of swagged and braided auburn hair and a crown atop that of gilt and gaudy jewels. She frowned minutely - not cracking the powder - and adjusted the line of one arching eyebrow.

A scratch at the door.

“Enter!”

Three opera rats tumbled in, little dancers from the troupe all done up in artistic jewel-bright ‘rags’ over layers of stiff tulle petticoats, the clacking of the hard boxes of their toe shoes disappearing as they tripped onto a thick Turkish rug.

“Can we come in?” said Fleur in a rush, fair-haired and wispy.

“We won’t be a bother,” added Therese, her ash-blonde curls already coming loose from her hairpins.

“We’re looking for the secret door,” added Simone, sloe-dark eyes snapping with excitement.

“The one the Phantom uses?” Constance asked quizzically.

“The Phantom?” said Fleur with fifteen-year-old disdain.

“I thought he was just a story -”

“- something to scare the little ones -”

“- but no, we’re looking for the Commune’s roads -”

“- from when they took over the Opera House -”

“- before Opening Night even! -”

“- and made it into a fortress -”

“- and a hospital -”

“- and ran balloons off the roof -”

“- and when they had prisoners they stored them down below next to the great furnaces and brought them up secretly to _interrogate_ them -”

“- in secret -”

“Why in secret?” asked Constance, briskly turning Therese around and pinning up her straying curls as little Fleur and Simone tapped the walls.

“They just did. They had secret tunnels and they say _this_ was where the interrogations happened -” Therese’s eyes strayed to an irregular stain darkening the floorboards, extending under the rich carpet, and gave a little scream.

“Oh, that,” said Constance, briefly lifting a hand to her mouth before dropping it and turning her head. “You don’t want to know about _that.”_

Fleur and Simone moved closer together, hands seeking each other.

“I was there,” Constance said sadly. “I saw it all. But no. That’s not a story for you.” She sighed.

Therese swallowed hard. “You can tell us,” she ventured. “We won’t cry.”

“I was there when it happened,” continued Constance. “Just your age or a little younger. When the principal danseuse of the day -” she crossed herself “- may she rest in peace, La Chevreuse, she used to let the little ones keep her company when she was dressing, I’ll never forget that. _Such_ a lovely woman…”

“And?” quavered Simone.

“So lovely,” said Constance sadly. _“Such_ a temper. And one night in an argument with her dancing partner she, she took a bottle, and smashed it, and -”

“Yes?” the opera rats chorused.

“The red wine in it spilled just _everywhere,_ said Constance. “You wouldn’t believe the mess.”

They sagged in unison.

“I said you wouldn’t like it,” said Constance briskly. “Now away with you. Catherine de Garouville won’t be kind if you’re late and hold up her solo at the gala.”

“Oh, de Garouville isn’t singing tonight,” said Simone.

“She’s developing _bronchitis_ and doesn’t want to strain her throat so -”

“- she’s dumping the understudy in it.” The opera rats looked at each other, concerned.

“Well, Sylvie can sing _Siebel_ alright,” ventured Therese.

“My _brother_ can sing Siebel alright and _he_ fits the trousers. But Marguerite’s big song...”

“No-one wants to crack a high note in front of the new owners and they say a maybe-patron is coming, the Comte d’Artagnan, and maybe his Mysterious Brother as well so it’s all going to be embarrassing.”

“De Garouville really is a -”

“Better be off,” said Constance firmly. _“Move.”_

They dropped into three obedient courtesies, a dip and a stretch of leg, and then scurried out.

Constance looked at the wall the girls had been tapping, a thin bit of clapboard and plaster that bisected a once larger room and shook her head sadly. She pinned up one last straying curl and stood, slipping into her own bulky layered skirts, short enough to show her ankles and footwork, and stretched with the boneless grace of a well-trained dancer.

In the corridor outside, someone screamed.

 

**

 

_Excerpt from “The Journals of Louis Bourbon (self-published)”_

I must say the final gala is very morbid. “Funeral March of a Marionette”, “Danse Macabre”, selections from “Faust”. Almost seems as if the old owner is staging his own funeral in a fine bit of melodramacy. No doubt the Australian sun will do his temperament good.

Not much of a hand with music - I’ll make sure they stage something jolly next. Feron will know a good piece. Looking forward to cracking open the books: I’ll make this place earn as it should do. The old owner’s melancholic temperament was messing with his business sense, I imagine.

We’re giving a ride in our carriage to a new subscriber - the new Comte d’Artagnan and company. Very rich, worth cultivating.

I’m looking forward to the ballet thingumbob. Heathen Queens!

 

**

 

Aramis, Chevalier d’Herblay, just back from the sea, sat back in a gilt chair in the Dancers’ Salon, that large elegant room set about with mirrors and bars fitted into the walls, that the wealthy and cosseted subscribers might mingle with the young performers without interrupting their last preparations for the show. There was a similar room for the singers, but he had been assured that _this_ was the place for jolly company and he believed it.

Nearby, his long, lean, younger brother Charles, the Comte d’Artagnan, talked earnestly with one of the new owners, M. Feron, whose night-black eyes sparkled in amusement as d’Artagnan mangled what might once have been an elegant quotation, his long crooked fingers moving elegantly over the handle of an ebony walking stick, and a man with a press pass tucked in the band of his hat, lined face falling into a comfortable, amiable, conversational smile. Feron’s partner, M. Bourbon, flitted around the salon as a butterfly, unable to settle on just _one_ flower, moves about a luscious garden. Streams of young women in artistic costume flowed among the subscribers, chattering, working their feet, stretching in quick, nimble arabesques at the bar.

“Forgive me,” said Aramis to the concierge standing beside him. “This is the first time I have been in a room with this many women in years and I am quite overcome.”

“Not at all,” said the concierge, a sweet-faced, grave young woman in rusty black. “It takes many men that way.”

“I haven’t had a good conversation in so long,” he said woefully. “Where do I start?”

A tiny, barely there smile flickered on the concierge’s pale lips before putting itself neatly away. “Such things generally start with a salutation.”

He rose lightly to his feet and, hand on heart, said, “Aramis d’Herblay, your humble servant.” He bowed, taking her little hand and kissing it with exquisite courtesy.

Another smile-flicker dared itself into existence before she said gravely, “Mme Anne Mauricia, also your humble servant.”

“Oh?”

“I serve your box tonight.”

A smile of Aramis’ own appeared, small but very sweet, and Anne’s smile warmed to it.

Then she tugged her hand away and moved back, just a touch. He stayed smiling. His eyes flickered over her shoulder. “Who is _that?”_

She glanced behind at a man in a neat Parisian coat whose broad shoulders and rich complexion _ached_ for robes in the Oriental fashion, for layers of brocade and cloth-of-gold and adornment with jewels, for loose garments that let the strong wrists and column of throat show themselves, that let him move freely. His brilliant eyes met Aramis’ briefly, he -

“That is M. Porthos Nikbin,” the concierge said. “Though mostly they call him the Persian. He -” Her voice faltered, and her own gaze strayed, to where a young dancer in artistic rags stood in the entrance to the salon and gestured to her furiously. “But if you will please excuse me.” She hurried away.

 

**

 

“He’s wicked, _wicked,”_ wailed Therese, a lock of fine hair falling loose from her coiffure.

“We just took our eyes off him for five minutes,” explained Fleur.

“He was taking a nap before the gala,” Simone said earnestly. “We wanted him to be well-rested.” Eyes wide and soulful, she added, “We thought we were helping, leaving him in the quiet…”

Anne looked at her young son, Louis, who trained with the other children in the Paris Opera’s dance school and had been chosen for a small part in the ballet. Louis, grimy, his scarlet leggings torn and hair in more than artful disarray, said nothing. There was a peach in his hand.

“How did he get so _cobwebby?”_ asked Therese, bewildered.  
“And he lost a devil horn!” said Simone in despair, “the wardrobe mistress will murder us, I know she will, she promised she would last time -”

“He’s _wicked,”_ exclaimed Fleur.

Constance, into whose dressing room they had hauled the errant child, and who was briskly scrubbing a stubborn stain off Little Louis’ cheek, caught Anne’s eye. They looked at each other. They chuckled. They cackled. They howled with laughter fit to bring down the ceiling.

 

**

 

The Singers’ Salon was in general a quiet, solemn area. Though it was as elegantly furnished as the room set aside for dancers, and the refreshment as delicate - if not more so - many singers preferred their final meditations and preparations in the privacy of their own rooms.

Yet Catherine de Garouville, prima donna of the company, could be relied upon to hold a small, respectful court with her esteemed following. Even tonight, when her throat was softly husky with developing bronchitis, she had made the effort to appear. “For,” she told her fans in a quiet murmur that would not strain her precious throat, “you have done me the courtesy of coming to visit; I could not respond with churlishness. When Necessity Calls, we must draw on our deepest wells of strength and only count the cost tomorrow.”

“I’m quite sure,” she added, sipping her honeyed tea, “that the understudy, Mlle Baudin, will do her best. She is young, she tries _so_ hard. I am quite sure that _this_ time she will rise to the occasion.” She blinked slow eyes, the pupils dark and huge and hypnotic from the drops she put in them. “More tea, anyone?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Dramatis Personae**  
>  Athos, a Phantom  
> Mlle Sylvie Baudin, a young singer  
> Porthos, from Persia  
> Aramis, Chevalier d’Herblay, a nobleman of dubious antecedents  
> Charles, Comte d'Artagnan, Aramis’ younger brother  
> Mme Anne Mauricia, a concierge  
> Little Louis, her young son  
> Constance, ‘La Bonacieux’, the opera’s principal dancer  
> Fleur, Therese, and Simone, young dancers in the line  
> Mlle Catherine de Garouville, the opera’s lead soprano  
> M. Louis Bourbon, a financial advisor and the Opera’s new manager  
> M. Phillipe-Achille Feron, the _other_ new manager  
>  M. Enrique Rochefort, a journalist  
> Milady (in flashback), a Persian noblewoman  
> Grimaud  
>  
> 
> // The Paris Commune used the building for a couple of months in 1871. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_Garnier
> 
> // _“My _brother_ can sing Siebel alright…_ \- Siebel is a minor role in Charles Gounod’s version of _Faust,_ a young man in love with the heroine. Like most ‘breeches’ roles, he is usually played by a mezzo-soprano (‘half-soprano’) - a warmer tone than a full soprano, but not as comfortable in the high notes. While there are notable exceptions, most operatic heroines, including Marguerite from the same opera, are sung by a soprano.


	3. The Young Singer's Debut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive the purple prose; it is required.

“Box 5 is empty,” Aramis said with curiosity, leaning against one of the marble pillars that framed the Owners’ Box, with his forearm resting along the plush velvet that lined its curved balcony rail.

A soft laugh from M. Feron in his high, padded seat. M. Bourbon chuckled and rolled his eyes. The journalist sat silently on a plain chair in the back, notebook and pencil in hand, and smiled slightly.

The Comte d’Artagnan, ensconced neatly beside them, lifted his black eyebrows in query.

“A joke,” Bourbon explained kindly. “All theatres have their little ways and our predecessor and his staff have been industriously, _earnestly_ pulling our legs.”

“Beware the g-g-g-ghost,” Feron stuttered, his wide mobile mouth curling at the edges.

“No doubt they put out fresh cream and roses on the doorstep for fairies -”

“- never whistle backstage -”

“- and forbid the name of some unlucky opera where everyone forgot their lines and there was a fire.”

“Artistic temperaments need to be humoured.”

“But not where it interferes with profit and good management,” said Bourbon fretfully, looking out at the box empty as a missing tooth amongst a great smile of patrons. “Once I have control I’ll put an end to this waste of a perfectly good facility.” He drummed his fingers on his leg slightly. They were in an intermission, the great front curtain, painted in _trompe l’oeil_ so that it looked swagged and draped and tasseled, was still and blank while scenery was shifted behind it.

“There was a tale I heard in Brittany when I was a child,” said Aramis slowly, “about a troupe of actors who had a play with twelve little devils in it, in the last scene, all running about the stage. They kept their travel costs down by hiring the extras at every little town and village where they laid out boards.”

“As one does,” said Bourbon.

“As one does,” Aramis agreed. The Comte d’Artagnan watched him with interest.

“So one night they’d set up in the town hall, on account of the rain and the dismal wind. It was near the end of the season, damp and lowering, and all the players were tired. The lead actress was at her wits end throwing her voice over the townsfolk, keeping their attention, wondering if they’d have to bring back the clown with the dog. And she kept a tally of the children playing the devils. Never mind one running off with a costume, there’s nothing like a Breton mama howling for her lost wean. So: one - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight - nine - ten - eleven - twelve… The hall was redolent with the fragrant scent of wet wool, and garlic on the breath and, ahem, other fragrant airs; the crowd was restive. She’d just started her last big speech when the thunder started. Ai! But she kept going. One - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight - nine - ten - eleven - twelve…”

“We have a much more polite crowd,” said Bourbon. “A better _class_ of people.” Beside him, the Comte d’Artagnan thought uneasily of the excellent garlic-and-pepper sausage on the refreshment table of the Dancers’ Salon, and wondered if there was a point being made. Silently, gravely, the concierge that served the box came in with a tray of goblets and a decanter of brandy, and left. Feron discreetly cracked open the cabochon of a ring on his forefinger and emptied the powder into his brandy, swirling the contents, and sipped.

“But the actress went on! Her speech had a Moral in it - you can get away with a lot of debauchery so long as there’s a Moral at the end - one - two - three - four - five - _Nay every man I shall bide with thee I will not forsake thee_ \- ten - eleven - twelve - _you will find me a good friend -”_ Silently, Aramis moved his hands apart and clapped them together in a crack of thunder. M. Bourbon jumped. “Thirteen,” Aramis whispered. “So she counted again: thirteen. And the lead actor counted: thirteen. Twelve children in costume, and thirteen little devils.”

“What did they do?” d’Artagnan whispered, leaning forward.

“Oh, scrubbed the floor and prayed on their knees all night. To save their souls.” Aramis cocked his head like a bird. “I didn’t say it was a _good_ story.”

Feron laughed, warm and rich. “A shipboard raconteur, I take it.”

Aramis grinned. “I also play fiddle.”

“Ahaha,” said Bourbon, “it was a clever little tale. But I think I’ll stretch my legs and have a last talk with our predecessor before he goes. Come along, M. Rochefort,” he said to the journalist, who rose with alacrity, “You can get some more material for your piece.”

“I am afraid that I was late to the formal introductions,” Feron said politely, eyes twinkling. “You I am familiar with, Comte d’Artagnan of Gascony. And you are…”

“The Chevalier d’Herblay,” Aramis answered, smiling. “His cous-”

 _“Brother,”_ said d’Artagnan firmly. Aramis stayed smiling, but lines showed in the corners of his eyes.

“Oh?” Feron asked, raising his eyebrows.

Comte d’Artagnan rubbed at the smoothness of his chin, which was shaved more than once a week only by the courtesy and sympathy of his valet, glanced at his older brother on the edge of the balcony, and said, “Through another, earlier marriage. Morganatic,” he floundered. “Morganatic from when our Papa was travelling in the east.”

“Just so, just so,” said Feron equably.

Standing with a pleasant smile, Aramis said, “I think that I, also, shall stretch my legs.”

“Ack,” sputtered the Comte, stood up in a gangle of limbs, and followed him through the little door into the hallway.

It was cooler there, the occasional tread of passers-by looking to mingle muffled by the heavy carpeting. Aramis leaned on the far wall, braced on his elbow and forearm. “Was that strictly necessary?” he asked the extravagant wallpaper.

“You were our father’s dirty little secret,” d’Artagnan said defiantly, “not mine.”

Aramis drew in a slow, measured breath, let it out. “There’s a word, Charles,” he said casually, “starts with ‘b’ and rhymes with ‘dastard’. You might try it sometime. Get the painful part over with, all that rot.”

D’Artagnan’s mouth flattened. Aramis turned and saw the boy standing still, dark eyes sad as a lost puppy in the rain. His straight black hair was already falling out of its pomade. Aramis’ mouth quirked in spite of himself and he reached to straighten the boy’s forelock.

“I’m trying to make things right,” d’Artagnan said, small and soft, “and give you the things you should have had when you were off sailing.”

“It can’t have been easy for you either,” Aramis said wryly, gently tugging at the soft bowtie around d’Artagnan’s neck.

“I didn’t even know about you; it was only Mother that cried.” Aramis blew air through his nose. “Can we keep trying?” Muffled by walls, orchestral music swelled.

Aramis nodded briefly. His eye caught for a moment on a big man in a lambskin cap walking past, led by Mme Mauricia the concierge, along the curve of the corridor in the direction of Box 5. Then, “We should go back, Charles, you’ll miss the ballet.”

The door opened and they saw the Faustian bacchanal, of witches and little devil-children and the ghosts of beautiful woman. D’Artagnan froze in the doorway as he saw, at the centre of the circling glory, La Bonacieux crowned in fire.

 

**

 

When the ballet had finished La Bonacieux stepped forward and gave a very pretty speech to the retiring manager, de Foix, frail and dignified as an elderly lion. When, cheeks flushed, she made her courtesy and the troupe behind her did likewise, a line of silver tears ran down his cheek and even from the gods one could see her blink heavily herself.

Then the curtain fell and the audience became restive. Most had heard that the Great de Garouville, much admired, would not be singing tonight and some moved to rise, unwilling to stay for less than her formidable, crystalline singing.

But the curtain rose again quickly, on a simple prison scene painted on a backdrop. A girl huddled to the side, head hidden against her knees, the tight dark ringlets of her hair streaming over bare arms and a dirty shift: Marguerite the lover of Faust, in prison for murder, trapped in despair.

The audience stilled reluctantly.

When the magician called to the girl she lifted her head and stood, revealing dark, expressive eyes under birdwing brows, with a delicate chin and a resolute mouth. Aramis, back to leaning on the balcony, muttered softly to himself, his own eyes sharpening. D’Artagnan shot him an appalled look.

The duet between the lovers began, recalling past meetings, promising love, begging for an escape - while a devil crammed himself between the lines, rude and bleating.

And Mlle Sylvie Baudin, the indifferently-abled ingenue tripping in de Garouville’s wake… sang. She sang the soul of a woman who loved a man and would not compromise, repenting neither love nor God, who accepted the place where that took her. She sang with a voice that carried to the farthest reaches of the auditorium, as intimate beside each woman and man who sat there as an old sweet love, lost and fondly remembered.

(A newspaper review in the morning described her voice: “not as Catherine de Garouville sings, peerless and perfect as a mountain of glass, but rather exploring the warm, verdant, lower slopes then ascending with vigour the chill, fierce peak. Finally, when the air of the world is bitter and all is dark under the moon, Mlle Baudin calmly steps upwards and enters the circling stars of Heaven. How has she hidden this from us?”)

When she had done and the last strains of the chorus fell away the girl stood barefoot and proud on the stage, her ribs heaving, head tilted and eyes shut as if she was listening for something through the thunderous applause.

“Oh…” breathed the young Comte. “She sings like that other lady dances.”

“Oh my,” said Bourbon, “what a wonderful find. Jolly good us, eh?”

Beside him, Feron said only, “Exquisite.”

"Can’t anyone see that she’s ill?” asked Aramis tautly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _a troupe of actors who had a play with twelve little devils in it_ \- actually, the story I heard was about a troupe of English actors, in the Elizabethan era. The play Aramis quotes in the story, Everyman, as far as I know has no devils in it. It’s all a horrible mashup, please forgive me.
> 
> // A morganatic marriage occurs between two people of different rank, such that the low-status spouse is not elevated in level and the children don’t inherit titles. It wasn’t practiced in France. (I have no idea if a Frenchman travelling in say, Austria, could contract the alliance, and I doubt if d’Artagnan did either.)
> 
> // A Visual Aid: https://thelaithlyworm.tumblr.com/post/168886268499/tuotilo-santiago-cabrera-as-count-vronsky-anna (I couldn't find a good ref for Comte d'Artagnan, but think ‘Young Luke Pasqualino’ in similar clothes.)


	4. A Conglomeration of Cads; Old Reminiscence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the length. This is where it wanted to stop.

Porthos Nikbin, known to most of the Paris Opera House as ‘The Persian’, had a friendly, unassuming air about him. He had a sad case of itchy feet and a passion for music which had combined to lead him, he confided to any that cared to know, in easy stages from the country of his birth to this place for a season and a season. Mild tempered, easily gregarious, and generous with tips - a large and gentle fox in a foreign land - it was his custom to wander nearly at will about the Paris Opera House and few remembered to remark on it.

Thus, it would have shocked most of the staff to see the altercation in the curving hallway outside Box 5.

“Is this man bothering you?” M. Rochefort asked Mme. Mauricia the concierge. Not a strand of his hair - so straw-like and limp that it must be bleached - was out of place, but his frosty blue eyes raked over the taller man imperiously, and he truly looked fit to set about him with his cane of tawny hardwood or even reach inside his jacket for some other implement of chastisement. A latecomer to the scene might wonder what the larger, darker man had _done_ to warrant such anger. Such a latecomer would wonder in vain.

“Not at all,” said Mme. Mauricia, forming her lips into a sweet smile. “There was merely a small confusion tonight over which box M. Nikbin had rented. As you can see, Box 5 is unavailable. It is in _Box 4_ that a seat has been reserved for him.” She tapped the placard on which was written ‘Closed for Renovations’ in elaborate curlicues of gold and touched, for emphasis, the sturdy steel padlock sealing its door. (She was a small woman, delicately made, and - as many poor women did, as much as they might with no dresser's clever fingers to aid them - twined and braided and pinned her tresses into elaborate display, using the natural glories of her hair to enhance her beauty in place of cold jewels dug from the rock. And yet, the good concierge's hair carried an extra sense of grace and care that set her apart from the other humble servants of the Opera.)

Rochefort looked at the pair of them sternly then his gaze softened and he stepped back. “I apologise, my lady. I believe I must have… misheard some language, as I was coming down the corridor, and misinterpreted after that. Please forgive me for causing any distress.” He bowed to her.

(Enrique Rochefort was a journalist who sometimes wrote for the _Le Petit Parisien,_ recently come back from travels abroad, who had quickly built a reputation for a keen, aesthetic eye and as a fierce defender of womanhood, writing several well-circulated essays on the delicate virtues of the fairer, gentler sex. The first made him a natural for covering the story of the change of management here; the second, perhaps, overzealous in some matters.)

“M. Nikbin,” the concierge addressed the man who towered over her. “My deepest apologies. May I offer complimentary coffee or lemonade as a small recompense for this… distasteful altercation?”

(As for the concierge, really she was nobody. A respectable widow of inadequate means and no particular family, she scraped a living as many did on low wages and tips and her son studied in the ballet school as many poor children did. They had rooms somewhere, it was thought. Little Louis did well enough in the dance, but was better known for that time he ran away for three days and was later found sleeping in a Rustic Stable set, snuggled up to a decorative sheep. They were nobody.)

Rochefort blinked at her and stepped back. Porthos nodded stiffly, doffing his lambskin cap.

What might have happened next is unclear, to a latecomer or the participants themselves for, as the muffled applause died down they heard, also muffled by the thin wooden walls, a man shout “Sylvie!”

Further up the curve of the corridor a door opened and Aramis d’Herblay shot out, putting on a fine turn of speed for a man in high-collared evening dress and tight, elegant shoes. He veered to avoid the tense trio but, mistiming in his alarm, knocked both Porthos and Mme. Mauricia. He turned back suddenly, setting his foot against the wall to change direction, and managed to catch Mme. Mauricia before she landed on the floor. Setting her neatly upright, he grinned apologetically to the Persian, bowed quickly to them both, brushing a stray lock of hair fallen across his forehead, and set off again at a run.

The concierge, the journalist, and the Persian, looked at each other with alarm. They followed him.

 

**

 

There was a grand fuss in the dressing room set aside for the singer Mlle Sylvie Baudin. She was young, indifferently talented, and her elderly patroness, Mme Clementine Valerious, had little remaining sway in the artistic world. In consequence the room was very small and the crowd, large and tumultuous, made itself larger as it manoeuvred uneasily about the poky furnishings, knocking about a little bowl of peaches on the side stand and jarring a little bouquet of roses bound with blue ribbon, and bouncing in an anxious sort of bonhomie off the walls as the large stagehand who carried the unconscious singer settled her gently on the shabby-velvet chaise-longue in the corner.

“She fainted, that’s all,” said Aramis d’Herblay, raising his voice in the easy assurance of an officer, or a nanny. “A little air will do the trick. Scoot, the bally lot of you.”

And such was his air of unconscious authority, and his apparent familiarity with the young lady, that the crowd allowed him to chivvy them outside without even a maid left as chaperone as he briskly shut the door.

He tugged a soft wrap over her recumbent form; he held her hand, fingers light on the inside of her wrist, and he waited.

Sylvie opened her eyes.

“Who the hell are you?” she said.

He dropped her wrist. “Seriously?”

She waited, moving her hand back to her lap, with her head resting still against the sloped back of the fainting-couch, and raised her eyebrows politely.

“Ah,” Aramis said. “It’s been a while.” Scooting his wobbly chair back slightly he raised his hands to gesture as he talked. “Picture this, mademoiselle: a small town in Brittany near the stony sea shore. A little girl walks along a pier, clicking the wood with her brass heels as her father the fiddler entertains a band of fishermen who mend their nets. For he often travelled in the summer, did Hubert Baudin, following the fairs and the travellers and escaping the life of the city. He used to say his meat -”

“- needed salt,” added Sylvie, her bright black eyes fixed on Aramis’ face.

“The gulls were calling, a little sun cracked the grey clouds, and a sudden gust pulled the little girl’s lace kerchief from her head. She cried out -”

“- and a little boy leaped into the water, _splish splosh splat,_ and almost drowned.”

“But he rescued the kerchief,” answered Aramis, his own black eyes very bright.

Sylvie levered herself up on one elbow. “Aramis,” she said, and touched his cheek with the ball of her thumb so that he smiled. “Forgive me, it’s been years. And I’m used to seeing you at a different angle.”

His jaw dropped in affront. “I wasn’t _that_ much shorter!”

She chuckled, low and merry. “Short enough, my little cherub.” He caught her hand and turned it, and she realised that a tremor was in her still, her cheeks hot, her heart still fluttering within her. “Ah, it’s only nerves,” she told him. “Tonight was a big night, for me.” She drew the wrap up around her bare shoulders, then loosened it. “I feel like I’ve been poured out and something else poured in,” she confessed.

“You found the Angel of Music?” he asked softly.

She only smiled a little, small and secret.

The door shot open and a maid came in, her dull blonde hair pulled back in a complicated twist and her eyes demurely downcast. “Tea for you, ma’am,” the maid, Margaret, said. “With honey for your throat.” She placed the tray with the steaming pot beside the simple bunch of dark roses on the side table and left quietly.

Sylvie looked at Aramis wryly and smoothed a strand of fallen hair from his forehead. “You’d best step out,” she told him. “I need to get out of these rags before I visit the audience. And a bit of quiet. To get my breath.”

He hesitated, looking at the hectic pink flush in her brown cheeks.

She flicked her hands impatiently. “Shoo!” she ordered with affectionate implacability.

Aramis went, escorting the maid downstairs.

And that was the last anyone saw of Sylvie Baudin for several days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, all I know about Le Petit Parisien is that it was extant in the 1890s and once ran a cover about a woman sleeping in bed with snakes. Not very informative, I know.
> 
>  _the natural glories of her hair to enhance her beauty in place of cold jewels dug from the rock_ \- the description of Anne's hair was largely written by my beta and inserted at her request. (She's a good beta: I try to do nice things for her.)


	5. The Morning After

**from the diaries of Sylvie Baudin, vol. III, a small leatherbound volume embossed S.B. in upper right corner**

_Mon. 3 January: Ghost is back. Oh, but he is scathing. I told him to put his money where his mouth was and he taught me a new way to practice trills. I said that I might try it and he disappeared. (I don’t know if he is grumpy or just shy. Maybe both.) But I’ll be back tomorrow: 8 o’clock sharp when no-one else is about this dozy old creaky mausoleum of a house._

_Feb 28: I’ll never admit it, never ever, but Ghost is right about the diaphragm exercises. I can feel the strength coming on, ever so slowly, and the flexibility, and the control. He’ll be insufferable. Still playing the candle game._

_Tues. 7 March: I made Ghost laugh today. He choked it off into a little gurgling snort halfway through and sounded very embarrassed. When I touched my own mouth I was smiling._

_(later)_

_It isn’t wrong to be happy. I know that. Grief has its season and Papa would be very wroth if he thought I were still carrying on like this. The fiddler spins the tune but he plays for the crowd, not so?_

_But I feel like I break a rule every time I breathe deeply. And it is as if walls of glass fall away - the view is the same but the wind scrapes me raw. It is… frightening._

_Thurs. 27 Aug: Mlle de Garouville said I’d do well as Fenella from La Muette. Replied it’d be grand to have a heroine who could emote. She went very quiet. Then she played it off with a little giggle but I think I hurt her feelings, which are Grand and Delicate._

_Tch, Sylvie. You are Siebel and you are in love with her. Or at least, her character. Be brave._

_Sunday. I can do this. Ghost promised he would sing a duet with me if I played Marguerite - like a kindly old uncle promising a sugarplum to an infant - and I fell for it. And Maggie is a very loveable sort of girl. I can be her for a little while. Plant my feet and touch the sky, oh yes._

_(later)_

_It's hard to believe, but I saw Aramis tonight. I’d thought him long vanished into the waves but here he is like a lucky spirit. But I shooed him out (I’m sorry, Aramis) for Ghost is coming. More tea - my throat is so dry. If I could only catch my_

 

**

 

Aramis, come somewhat late to the minutiae of Polite Society, at times found the intricacies of its etiquette more of an overlay, a tincture, a _shading_ to his own, idiosyncratic ethics. At the heavy tread behind him he turned gracefully, letting the little leatherbound book he’d taken from Sylvie’s dressing table fall silently into his pocket.

“Can I help you?” he asked, of the big man in a lambskin hat standing in the doorway. Though it was morning a room this deep in the building had no natural light and the gas lamps gave it an odd, out-of-time air. It was quiet, too early in the morning for many of the inhabitants, but in the distance, muffled by walls, they could hear the articulated thunder of stage machinery being manoeuvred, the chatter of opera rats running from their dormitories to the practice halls.

“Are you looking for Sylvie?” the Persian - Porthos Nikbin - inquired.

“Why yes,” Aramis answered. “I thought it’d be lovely to invite her to tea. She left so abruptly last night…” He clicked his tongue. “And yourself?” he asked.

“Oh, I just like to wander,” Porthos answered peacefully. A faint dimple showed in one cheek as he smiled. “You know me.”

“I don’t,” Aramis answered honestly. Also honest, he said, “But I’d like to.” The dimple deepened. Of its own accord Aramis’ hand lifted; he placed it firmly on his hip, then shifted back a little and glanced around the little room again. Plaster walls, of adequate cleanliness, dressing table, a fainting couch set low to the ground, a couple of chairs. In the absence of a proper armoire there was a wooden pole with Sylvie’s costumes hanging from it by the room’s one extravagance: an enormous mirror that reached to the ceiling, wide enough that two men might stand side by side and view each other’s glassy phantoms, its mottled glass set inextricably in the wall and framed by faintly painted roses. Aramis tapped the glass fretfully and looked away, glancing again at the fainting couch.

“You’re troubled. Are you her lover?”

Aramis laughed shortly. “I haven’t seen her since I was fourteen. I was a friend of her family.” His fingers drummed lightly against his leg. “But where did she go last night?”

“Hmm?” Porthos asked peacefully, encouragingly.

“I’d only just left the room when the new owners came to visit and found the room empty. Wouldn't I have seen her on the stairs? And -” He bit off the words. A young lady’s privacy was a precious thing and should be spent at her own discretion, no-one else’s. She’d sounded happy, when her voice came muffled through the walls. The man who’d answered, the light, rich tenor, had seemed kind. He peered again at the fainting-couch. From a somewhat varied experience - not all of it disreputable - he was tolerably certain an adult could not fit under there, certainly not and leave it quickly enough to have an amiable conversation. And yet, there weren’t any other places where a man could have secreted himself…

As he fretted, the Persian knelt smoothly and picked up a little bauble lying near one leg of the couch, a little bit of wood carved in the whorl of a tiny ram-horn and painted bright scarlet. He rolled it between his fingers thoughtfully.

“Her street dress is still on the hanger,” Aramis said.

“Hm, so it is,” said Porthos, lifting a sleeve and examining a few dark spots on the ruffle, then looking at the extravagant, mottled mirror with curiosity.

Aramis turned back to the curve-legged, shabby-gilt dressing table, ruffling through a few ribbons and pots of maquillage. He picked up a lone china teacup by the fruit bowl and swirled the dregs in it, absently, then frowned and sniffed them. "Hm. Would you happen to see the teapot, M. Nikbin?” he asked.

There was no reply.

He looked up. The Persian had left the room.

“Well, that’s just _fine_ then.” Aramis threw up his hands.

A soft shuffling tread and a woman moved into the doorway. “Can I help you?” It was the concierge, the woman he had been chatting with last night and then callously knocked over. Mme Mauricia wore dull brown today, a poor woman’s colour, but it was fitted neatly and she stood with an easy poise that spoke of long ago deportment training. Her pale cheeks dimpled as she smiled slightly. “Are you lost, M’sieur?”

Aramis’ own smile blossomed like an amiable rose. “Not at all, Madame,” he said politely. “I am merely looking for the singer Mlle Baudin. I missed her at the soiree after the gala.”

“Oh, the young lady went home early,” said the concierge. “After she fainted on the stage we thought it best that she rest well.” A dimple showed in Mme Mauricia’s cheek. “Please have no worries on Mlle Baudin’s account: I walked her home myself and saw her resting quietly. She assured me that she would be quite well by the official Welcome In on Thursday, but wished to be undisturbed before then.” Stepping past him she took the simple burgundy street dress off the hanger and draped it over one arm.

Aramis lightly touched her arm with the back of his hand. “May I ask where you’re taking that?” he asked softly.

“To be cleaned,” she said in surprise. “Sylvie mentioned that her spare dress needed freshening; I try to keep things running smoothly for all the inhabitants of the Paris Opera House.”

“You are most thoughtful, Madame.”

“I do try,” she said, her dimpled smile showing itself again, and stepped out of the room. Aramis moved to follow her.

“There you are!” D’Artagnan appeared at the top of the stairs, waving one long arm. He looked at Aramis standing so close to the concierge, raised one sooty eyebrow, and said, “Seriously?”

“We’re just talking,” said Aramis, very flat.

“Hmmm?”

The concierge slipped away behind him, down the wooden flights of stairs.

“One of those mornings...”

 

**

 

**from the diaries of Sylvie Baudin, loose leaves: one stave-lined page. Recto: the alto line of an unpublished Orphée et Eurydice duet in pencil. Verso:**

_I don’t know where I am. I’m frightened._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _said I’d do well as Fenella from La Muette_ \- Fenella, the heroine of _La Muette de Portici,_ is silent (and generally played by a dancer). - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_muette_de_Portici
> 
> // _Still playing the candle game._ \- some singers practice in front of a candle, because the behaviour of the flame gives them really clear feedback on what their breath and projection are doing.
> 
> // I watched Alexandra Dowling in another tv show to get some feeling for body language and such to bring to this AU. Do you know what Anne’s lying face looks like? Exactly the same as her honest face. Bless you, Ms Dowling, for your dimpled smiles. 
> 
> // _Orphée et Eurydice_ \- the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, where a musician goes down to hell to try and rescue his lover with music, was a very popular opera theme.


	6. From The Depths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short one. Sorry.

**_from the diaries of Sylvie Baudin, loose leaves: three stave-lined pages. Recto: unfinished fugue for organ, written in pencil. Verso:_ **

_first page_

_I remember there was mist._

_Swirling mist over a dark glassy lake. No stars, it must have been foggy that night. No. There were pillars of dressed stone - and when He lit the great lamps the fingers of radiance reached up to a ceiling blank as a prison. I am underground._

_Be brave, Sylvie._

_Somewhere in the middle of last night I rode a horse. Old Cesar from the stables - I’d recognise that lackadaisacal flick of an ear on any occasion. It’s all so muddled. Is the horse with us now?_

_When_

_~~When I was taken~~ _

_~~When I left the dressing room~~ _

_When He took me. He told me there was a beautiful woman and I kept asking where? where? and He laughed in a hurting sort of a way and He made me drink something bitter, all that was in the bottle. It’s been so long since I’ve been held, really held in someone’s arms. It was only when He tried to pull me through the mirror that I began to fight._

_second page_

_I’m all over in a muck sweat. Frankly, Sylvie, I reek of it, sticky and rank with an odd bitterness that I don’t particularly care for. I’m still wearing Marguerite’s shift from last night ~~I don’t think I was~~ it hasn’t been disarranged, it’s just sweaty. There’s a jug by this pretty little bed, and a basin, some woman’s plain calico shift and a dressing gown in the most boring shade of brown that I have ever encountered._

_I ask you, Sylvie, when as children you and Aramis would hide near a graveyard in the dark watches waiting for the Ankou with his floppy hat and his cart of the dead - did you ever imagine that the Land of the Dead would be this - this fussy bourgeois bedroom with framed prints on the walls and a bottle of lemonade with paper-wrapped sandwiches sitting in a basket by the door? I do not think you did. There is a cat just arrived, black with one white whisker. I think she wants me to pet her._

_It can’t be Hell, not really. Last night I heard the Angel of Music._

_third page_

_Enough prevaricating!_

_The door is right there - go, Thou, and open it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // The Ankou is a personification of death from Breton folklore. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankou


	7. The Other Side of the Mirror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Porthos and Aramis and d'Artagnan next chapter, I swear.

**from the Working Notes of Olivier Garnier fils, called Athos**

_… subject appears to have received two separate doses of Atropa Belladonna, ingested through a suspension of honeyed tea, the second dose large enough to be fatal without rapid treatment. Symptoms: racing, thready pulse, dizziness, increased thirst, enlarged pupils._

_Known antagonists: a bean grown in Old Calabar, otherwise used as an ordeal poison; that old standby, opium. I do not have Calabar beans. Opium is always with me._

_Treatment: Tincture of opium approx. 20 drops in water, taken internally. Repeated half hour later._

_Outcomes: Subject’s pulse and breathing returned to steadiness, subject near somnolent, oddly stiff jaw, body temperature depressed, pupils remain enlarged._

_Further treatment: Placed heated bricks wrapped in flannel at subject’s feet and sides, removed when fever began._

_Expansion: Old books on witchcraft say opium and belladonna are key components of flying ointment, the salve which induces dreams of wonder and travel and nightmare. Psychological element may be impor_

_Subject shows signs of distress. ~~Sylvie is crying.~~ Stupor slowly lifting, anxiety and turmoil increasingly evident._

_~~Sylvie is afraid and I cannot help her.~~ _

_Adjustment of environment conducive to calm: violin music - The Resurrection of Lazarus, Breton lullabies, ~~everything that she likes~~ miscellaneous. Approx. 8.30 am, subject moves to relaxed sleep. ~~She is light-boned as a little wild bird, as if she might break with a touch.~~ Left to wake at own pace._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // If anyone tries to apply any of the pharmacological references that appear in this fanfic, I swear to God I will hunt you down and shoot you. Anyway.  
> Deadly Nightshade: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropa_belladonna  
> Calabar bean: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physostigmine#The_Calabar_bean  
> Antagonism: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1309974/?page=1 and  
> Flying Ointment: Flying_ointment#Possible_opiate_component


	8. Exploration

It was like a toybox, or a doll’s house, or a collection of maquettes.

Through the bedroom door Sylvie padded into a room where blue and green and cream-coloured tiles adorned its cool floor and high arches. There was a shallow rectangular pool in the centre of it. The black cat raced in front of her, tail high, and began to lap at the edge of the water as Sylvie dabbled her toes in the cool, pure liquid.

Beyond the pool she walked through a high, arched portal set into a recess and down three marble steps into a mausoleum done in the baroque style where a catafalque supported an ebony coffin. The lid was disarranged. When she peeked inside she saw rumpled velvet blankets and a neat linen pillow. The blankets stirred and she shrieked, leaping back and stumbling as she tripped against a low step. With a musical trill another black cat crawled sleepily from inside the coffin, blinked slowly, and poured herself down. White Whisker leaped on her and they rolled over and over snarling affectionately before the second cat pinned her foe and began to wash her face while purring.

Sylvie dropped her hand from her mouth and picked her way towards them, but they got to their feet and moved away, maintaining a cheerful distance between them. She stepped back.

Through a little corner door she stooped and stepped into a workshop laid with tiny gears and moving parts, rack upon rack of delicate tools, a tilted drawing table, and on the walls like pinned butterflies plan after plan of buildings and machines and inventions and toys and flowers and musical instruments. An open book lay by a half-finished bronze grasshopper; she passed her fingers lightly across the pages and squinted, eyes still slightly blurred, at the handwriting: _...subject appears to have received…_

Sylvie passed through a music room and through a set of massive double doors into a strange garden of metal trees planted in sand, lit by a great glass-faced gaslamp in the ceiling, and folded wobbly legs to rest her back against a crooked iron oak. She stared wonderingly at the mirrors that made the grove extend into a forest and herself repeat outwards into it. The paper-wrapped sandwiches were still in the pocket of her borrowed dressing gown and she opened it, biting hungrily into fresh white bread filled with nutty gruyere cheese and boiled ham. The tart and sweet bottled lemonade disappeared in two swift draughts when she realised how thirsty she was.

She put the crumpled wrapper and the bottle back in her pocket when she was done, superstitious of leaving anything behind her but footprints.

The cats found her again and trotted with her or raced ahead through the doors. “I’m sorry,” she said, surprised by the creakiness of her voice, “I ate all the food.” But they seemed to consider the question irrelevant.

At last she found the lake, the black and silent water, the pillars of squared stone holding up a stone sky.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

She squinted, looking out into the dimness. The lights were low, but she found him at last, a dark figure in leather pants and black linen, half-hidden by the pillar against which he slouched, pale profile looking out over the water.

“But here you are,” he added, indifferently. “Can’t be helped.”

“Ghost,” Sylvie whispered, the bare soles of her feet uncertain on the punishingly cold rock.

“Call me Athos if you like. I don’t really care either way.”

He didn’t even look at her as he spoke, arms crossed and one foot tucked up against the pillar.

“Athos,” Sylvie said, the word husky in her throat. “Athos, you _ass.”_

 

**

 

Porthos patted the heavy frame in front of him in frustration. But the mirror doorway, which had opened so suddenly that he fell through into a dark narrow hallway, remained stubbornly fast, the door silently shut behind him. Something small and hard, like a peach pit, rolled away from his shoe.

He tapped again at the usual places where Athos used to put catches and viewing ports, then swore softly to himself. Voices, muffled through the wall, then silence. Porthos bit his lip. Retrieving a box of red phosphorus matches from his pocket, he struck one alight on his boot and looked left and right. It was dark either way, a passage of undressed pine thrown together hastily a long time ago, filthy with dust. He twirled the wooden matchbox in his fingers, pocketed it, and set off to the right.

The noises of the opera house surrounded him - the dozy creakiness of a large building, distant hammering of a building set, the chattering voices of a flock of young dancers as he prowled along narrow passages and perilous steep stairways, his large frame light and silent as any hunter. His last match was nearly to his fingertips as he turned a corner where splotches of bright sunlight fell from high grates in the stone wall he now walked by. Letting the match die he eased himself to one of them and silently, patiently, peered through it.

It was one of the training halls - a large, airy room with enormous mirrors and barres set to the side. Girls in knee-length white tutus, chemises, and brief dancing bodices were arrayed about the room, standing and sitting and crouching retying the ribbons of their pointe shoes around their ankles. As Porthos watched, a fair-haired girl reached an arm behind her back and scratched between her skinny shoulder blades, another tugged her backwards and pinned up a streamer of fallen hair. Beside them, a third sat cross-legged on the floor and watched avidly one of the senior dancers demonstrating fouettes to a small knot of advanced students. (Across the room a dark older woman in a sensible burgundy suit watched her with soft eyes, her mother? - many of the young dancers were orphans, or just brutally poor, taking one of the few routes of economic advancement available.) The girl whose hair was being pinned moved just as her sitting friend shifted to lean against her leg and toppled over with a squawk. The others plumped themselves beside her and stretched their legs out, rolling their ankles. One tucked a red silk flower in her friend’s hair.

As focussed and casual as the girls were, Porthos still had an urge to look away, the push to turn away from the forbidden territory of the women’s area. But he stayed a moment longer.

On the other side of the hall in the plush chairs reserved for subscribers, the young Comte d’Artagnan sat in a neat suit and unobjectionable top hat, staring at the training girls in wonder. Beside him, his brother pored over a little book bound in leather. For some reason the young man looked up then, in the direction of the ventilation grate Porthos peered through. It was coincidence, surely, but it almost seemed that his bright ebony eyes met Porthos’ and he stilled in curiosity. The man had long eyes, Porthos thought absently, he’d seen it before in sailors who cast their vision out on the distant ocean in all weathers, whose lives might depend on an unnoticed rock, a ship hidden in the fog, a change in the currents. Porthos had seen it in hill-fighters also, and wondered briefly how the man would do with the curved butt of a long _jezail_ rifle at his shoulder, thought with an odd pang of home - dry earth in the hot sun -

He turned away.

 

**

 

“It’s just like a fencing lesson,” d’Artagnan whispered in wonderment.

Aramis, who was engrossed in an account in Sylvie’s strong, graceful handwriting of the Ratcatcher that lived underground and Must Never Be Spoken To and other private myths of the Opera House, only grunted in reply.

His brother’s sharp elbow nudged the meat of his arm. “What are you doing, Aramis?”

“Reading a lady’s intimate secrets,” Aramis answered absently, turning a page to the stories of the cache of bodies left by the Communards. “I pray you, do not follow my example.” There were corridors in the walls also, Sylvie’s account said, or at least the lore kept alive by the little dancers held it as true. He looked up, considering, at one of the ventilation grates set high in the wall across the great room… “Hm.” But how did one get in?

“Oi, you, this is a dance class not a brothel.”

He felt his brother jerk and glanced to see d’Artagnan flushed an ugly shade of madder red, leaning away from the auburn-haired dancer who stood over him. “I wasn’t,” the boy stuttered. “No. I -”

“Put a finger on one of them girls and I will gut you,” she said significantly.

“But, no you see -”

_“Like a fish.”_

“What my brother means to say,” said Aramis mildly, “is that he was just remarking on the similarity this place bears to the fencing salon in which he spends many of his afternoons. (Breathe, Charles.) He begs your forgiveness if has unwittingly transgressed in the etiquette of this room, either by word or gesture, and further prays that you shall make some allowance for future _faux pas_ as he is quite new to the Arts. (His Mother did not approve of Opera.)”

“Or Opera dancers?” she asked. Aramis dipped his eyelids in acknowledgement.

“Well then,” La Bonacieux said, somewhat mollified. To d’Artagnan she said, “My apologies if I misread. We get some awful degenerates trying to come in here sometimes.”

“Oh _no,”_ d’Artagnan said, rising and doffing his hat to her. “It was just the feel of the room, you know?”

“We do fencing, too,” La Bonacieux said, as an offering of peace. “An hour every second afternoon. It’s good for upper body flight and the _travesti_ roles.”

“Really?” d’Artagnan said eagerly, offering her a seat. “Which Maestro’s teaching do you follow? Mine is an Italian, but -”

Aramis smiled slightly and bent his head, listening to them talk while waiting for the head teacher. In Sylvie’s diary he found the first mention of the Ghost…

 

**

 

Porthos paced still through the hidden passages. He had one match left, but was unwilling to use it, and instead walked carefully with his fingers trailing against the wall at his side. He heard voices filter through the shadowed air - the Great de Garouville in urgent conversation with the new owners, one of the journalists from last night amiably discussing set painting with a handful of stagehands, a weeping maid, three door-closers passing one cigarette between them and talking about women.

Finally the secret corridors decided they did not love him - a door opened unexpectedly and shut behind him immovably. He was in one of the cellars that stored old scenery, some kind of extravagant farm scene or somesuch. It was then that his luck ran out, and a trapdoor opened under his feet.

And Porthos was falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _in a strange garden of metal trees planted in sand…_ \- This is where I wonder who’s read the book…
> 
> // I found some of the images of Tom Burke as Dolokhov in War and Peace to be, *cough*, a Useful Visual Aid: https://thelaithlyworm.tumblr.com/post/168886781879/ohmyactualgodtomburke-unkindness313
> 
> // Another Useful Visual Aid: https://thelaithlyworm.tumblr.com/image/169109872679 one of a series of paintings by Degas of quite candid looks at the working life of Opera dancers.
> 
> // Jezail rifles are the traditional weapons of Afghani hill-fighters, though my source reckons they originated in Persia/Iran - a look at one here: https://www.forgottenweapons.com/traditional-afghan-jezail-video/ They had a distinctive curved shoulder piece, a very long, ornamented barrel, and a reputation for extreme accuracy.
> 
> // _travesti role_ \- a role of the opposite gender to the performer playing it. Pretty common in opera at this point.


	9. Dark Waters

“Athos, you _ass.”_

Sylvie’s vision was still blurred and troublesome, and the light was poor on the shore of the dark lake, but she thought she saw a hint of a smirk curl the corner of his mouth. Or perhaps it was her imagination.

Still half-hidden by the pillar against which he leaned, looking out over the water, he gestured with one hand - a spare and graceful movement. “Good afternoon, Mademoiselle Baudin: it is a delight to see you grace this abode. Please consider yourself welcome to come and go as you please though I must caution you to watch your step in the dark for some of the footing is a little treacherous. May I inquire as to whether you have partaken of luncheon?”

She nodded, feeling hair twisted by sleep into wild elf-locks hiss over her shoulders, and stepped cautiously closer. He seemed to take her silence as assent, still refusing to look at her. There was a twist to his lip, in the side of his face that she could see, either a cut or a birth defect that had been mended badly. The scar gave to his pale lips and Grecian profile a sneer, a derisive gloss to whatever else he might be saying and the richness of his well-trained voice only helped that along…

“What did you give me?” she asked, her throat very dry.

His head bowed, his eyes shut. “Opium,” he said at last.

“Stolen off to the seraglio, hm?”

After a silence, he said, “It was not my intent to outrage you. I believed you had been poisoned by an unknown third party and there was little time to inquire as to your wishes.” More silence. “I do not believe a dose of that size would be addictive.”

She stepped a little closer, almost near enough to touch the warmth of his arm. He twitched, as if anticipating it, and shifted his weight away.

“Are you afraid of me?” she asked softly.

Sylvie saw the flicker of a black eyelash as he opened his eyes and looked out over the lake. A hint of a smile stirred in his scarred lips. “Of goblins, of ghosts,” he answered sing-song, “of riddles without answers and wells without bottoms, of dreams, and schemes, and the _things_ that knock in the night -”

“- but remember that little girls…”

“... are the most fearsome of all.”

“How strange,” she said. “I don’t feel scary.” Gently, she touched the side of his arm, warm and vital through the thin black sleeve, rigid with tension. He suffered it briefly, then melted away, stepping around the pillar.

“I fear you will undo me,” came his voice from the dark. A tiny silver bell high overhead sounded. “My apologies. There is someone at the door.” And she heard the faint swirl of water as he stepped into it.

 

**

 

Porthos did not fall far into the darkness. He landed like a cat, with relaxed feet and legs like springs to take the shock, and remained standing.

It was a large room that he was in - he could hear the echoes of his fall fading over the hiss of his breath, and a rustle, a chitter, tiny in itself but multiplied over and over.

Rats.

It was best not to panic, with rats. Either they were just down here doing their own business and living their own lives and making a fuss served no purpose, or they were very hungry - or very frightened - and making a fuss… also served no purpose. So Porthos Nikbin held his breath, and waited, and felt the little beasts flow around him like a retreating tide in the dark.

There was a sun come up underground, blinding. It jigged to the side - a fiercely heated lamp held by a man in a heavy cloak with a felt slouch-hat pulled low over his eyes.

Porthos shielded his eyes, trying not to think of artificial heat, of clever traps, and called hesitantly, “Athos?”

The figure paused at his call.

“This is No Man’s Land,” he said gruffly. The rats continued to flee away from the light.

“Is that Athos?” Porthos repeated, squinting into the glare.

The figure hesitated, then dimmed the glow on his fantastical lantern to show a face long and grim, much cut about. On his ungloved hand was a collection of old, jewelled rings that caught the artificial light and piqued Porthos’ eyes. “I’m the Ratcatcher,” the man said, “Grimaud. It isn’t safe to be down here without a light.”

“I’m a bit lost,” Porthos said, with a disarming grin. “You ever meet a man name of Athos down here? Or, he might not give a name. Bit of a grump, that one.”

Silence. “I don’t go near the water,” the man said at last. “Nor should you.” Even so, he pointed behind him, and tossed Porthos a little dark-lantern.

The last of the rats fled and the man moved to go.

“Good hunting,” Porthos called behind him. Then, “Hoi,” he asked, giving into curiosity. “How does a humble ratcatcher get so many fancy rings?”

“The dead don’t need ‘em,” the Grimaud said, and walked away, taking his light with him.

 

**

 

Of what passed between Porthos and Athos on the shore of the dark lake, the reservoir that kept the Opera House safe from perturbation, that is written elsewhere.

But also, this:

Athos came up from the water silently as always, for pride and to maintain a hard-won skill. But after that he walked as he normally did - still near-silent on cloth-soled slippers and with a habitual prowl, but he did not trouble to hide the pin-fall sounds of water dripping off him, or refrain from shaking his head like a sad and soggy dog stuck glumly going through the motions of exuberance. The conversation had left, as it were, a bad taste in his mouth.

The cat that he called Big Sister (when he bothered to call her anything at all) stared at him sleepily from a cushioned nook high in the mouth of a savagely grinning gargoyle, her one white whisker gleaming, and stretched a lazy paw to bat at his scalp as he passed below. Athos ignored her.

He found Sylvie in the long narrow room he’d structured as a peasant farmer’s longère, at one end of the shallowly sloping dirt floor where the hearth was built and people might dwell away from the beasts. Her feet were tucked beneath the skirts of her brown dressing gown, her skin glowed bronze in the dancing firelight, and her eyes sparkled as she wielded a stick and a string for the amusement of the other little cat, who danced along the floor following every flirting movement of the sinuous string.

Her head turned at the brush of his damp foot on the threshold and she saw him then, a monster come out of the water, saw his face clearly for the first time. A brave girl, not prone to fuss was Sylvie, and she didn’t scream now. Quite quietly, her eyes rolled up behind her eyelids and she fainted.

Kneeling, Athos picked the girl up in a bundle of her shift and robe, and lifted her away from the little fire. “It is the remnants of the drug in her,” he told the cat, who had fled to hide behind the fodder-trough at the bottom end of the room, “it would make anyone nervous.” The water in his clothes would soak into her own quite soon. Considering, he carried her back to the room she had woken up in, the one with a comfortable bed, but hesitated before laying her down. Both the cats followed him and jumped on the quilt to watch. “You’re right,” he told them, “a mask would only be polite tomorrow.” He hesitated still. _“Hair by hair she sees my crookedness and feigning,”_ he said. “And what then?”

Quickly, guiltily, he kissed the top of her head and laid her down. He covered her with a quilt and fled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _either a cut or a birth defect that had been mended badly_ \- cleft lip/palate surgery is a robust and well-understood field these days but the basic form practiced in the 19th century didn't always go _great._ That said, I once read an interview with Tom Burke (can't find it anymore) where he described his own experience with a cleft lip as “nothing but positive”.
> 
> // The discussion of opium is fairly fraught for Europe during the 19th century. On the one hand, it had well-known medicinal uses (not just pain-relief, but for coughs and diarrhea) and as a tincture in alcohol (laudanum) was widely sold, considered safe for children, and sometimes made at home from poppies grown in the cottage-garden. (Possible to _overuse_ , yes, but still medicinal.)
> 
> And then there’s the British Empire cornering opium production on the Indian subcontinent and fighting two separate wars with China over the right to sell it there in bulk, creating its own market of junkies, because that was an easier way to get _tea._ (And balance of trade, an excuse to seize land, the power to write favourable treaties etc. etc.)
> 
> And also: casting people who _smoked_ opium (instead of taking it as laudanum) as villainous and debauched Orientals keen on seducing European women into depraved ways when they weren’t just kidnapping them into harems and then doping them up…
> 
> So a lot of conflicting messages, is what I’m saying.
> 
> // _the long narrow room he’d structured as a longère_ \- yes, I’m the kind of arsehole who just spent half an hour researching French agricultural building styles for a couple of throw away lines. Pity me. _Pity._ Ref for masochists: https://www.pierreseche.com/VAFranceEnglish.html
> 
> // _“Hair by hair she sees my crookedness and feigning,”_ \- a slight misquote from the Persian poet Rumi.


	10. Walking in Circles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't yet looked at Anathema Device's wonderful companion story, Le Fantôme des Mousquetaires (https://archiveofourown.org/works/13281189/chapters/30391446), I humbly suggest that you do so.

**from the diaries of Sylvie Baudin, vol. III, a small leatherbound volume embossed S.B., upper right corner**

_They say the Ratcatcher was one of the men killed by the Communards, back in the Siege, but it didn’t take and so he crawled out from under the pile of bodies and just… stayed. They say he sells the meat of his hunting to a particular sausage maker in Montmartre and if he comes up short then he bags a child, or a little dancer (there are so many and some do run away), and carves them up into pieces to sell instead. The girls in the chorus are staging an Expedition to the Region to work out which one and have invited me to come. For informational purposes, they tell me. I asked if they meant to inform the Gendarmerie and their eyes goggled - I forget how poor these girls are, and how little love there is for them from Society. But they have a home here, in the Ballet School, and a scrap of a wage, and I myself have little reason to put on airs. So we lost ones band together._

_Other lore of the House: it’s lucky to feed a cat, especially a black one. Mirrors are uncanny - don’t stand too close when you’re alone. At midnight on Walpurgisnacht the statues of Harmony and Poetry stir their wings and call to each other. Understudies always have accidents. And they say if you sit in Box 5 you can hear even a whisper on the stage or anywhere else in the auditorium (a trick of acoustics?) but if you stay too long the Devil will speak and then you’ll die in three days. (I should write a book, as Father did.)_

_I went to sit with Mama Valerious this afternoon. She is doing as well as can be expected - she remembered my name and spoke of Father’s music. (The nurse is horrid but Finances will not stand for better.) I don't think it will be long now._

 

Aramis closed the little book around his thumb and stared without seeing at the green and lilac wallpaper of the little cafe. His coffee, thick and black, had long gone cold in its gilt-edged cup; he drank it anyway. Even in the elegant Golden Lotus cafe on the Rue Scribe he felt the louring presence of the Opera House. He was too close to its bulk, perhaps, or too involved, but the weight of stone that reminded him increasingly of a mausoleum still circled through his thoughts.

A sob from across the room caught at his attention and he saw, at a corner table, the maid from last night - in a plain but well-fitted dress with a modest hint of lace curving around her neckline, and dull blonde hair twisted into elegant braids and knots. Her hands were folded in front of a simple coffee cup, and her eyes, very dark for her colouring, shone with tears. Even as Aramis moved to stand another man sat down beside her. It was the journalist, Rochefort, with an easy smile in a comfortably worn-in face. His blue eyes looked kind as he raised a very clean handkerchief to the corner of the maid’s eyes and she smiled gratefully. The journalist muttered a quip in a low warm voice and she hid a startled giggle behind her hand. He covered her other hand with his own as he leaned forward confidingly.

It would be monstrous rude for a man to intrude himself in that tête-à-tête, and yet Aramis held himself poised on the tip of a decision.

But a silver bell tinkled in the cafe door and another familiar face stepped calmly inside - the concierge, Mme Mauricia. She walked straight to the counter where the shop staff, a tall, young, and bony woman in a white shirtwaist and trumpet-shaped black skirt cheerfully measured out roasted coffee beans and several varieties of dried tea onto squares of paper, folded them into neat packages, and bound them with string sealed with bright green wax. Mme Mauricia paid for them with bright coins, not a note of credit. As she lifted the chequered red cloth that covered her enormous basket and turned calmly to go, Aramis noted a hint of linen and lace that - not to put too fine a point on it - reminded him inexorably of a woman’s underthings. Which any young woman about her errands might carry, and yet.

It would be the act of an enormous cad to intrude on a woman’s _private_ shopping expedition without a measure of amiable familiarity that Aramis and the concierge did not at present possess. He mentally assigned himself three Hail Marys as penance and followed her out the door.

 

**

 

Mme Anne Mauricia looked mildly at the pretty young man who had invited himself along on her shopping trip, winding in lackadaisacal loops around tables of second-hand clothes sellers in a sunny little outdoor market as she dickered sharply for more shirts and britches for her rapidly growing son.

“Are you _quite sure_ I can’t carry something for you, Madame?”

She smiled slightly, and handed him her large wicker basket, watching with amusement as he listed slowly to one side. (It _was_ heavy, it’s true, but as she’d thought he took the opportunity to clown a little. He had the look of a joker.) _Struggling manfully,_ Aramis d’Herblay straightened under the weight. He didn’t try to look under the cloth, she noticed, but burbled cheerfully of coming to Paris after years at sea and how all the streets seemed to _sway_ under foot and how all the gossip had shifted and he was woefully unlettered in it. He contrived to look woebegone at that last. (He reminded her of her husband.)

“I imagine you must hear everything there is to know,” he commented casually.

“About the Opera House certainly,” Anne remarked, amused. “Few people really _look_ at those who fetch their snacks and chill their drinks _just so.”_ (That had been a great lesson in times past though, she had to admit, a mortifying one to learn.) “They don’t often modulate their speech.”

“And are you, too, a collector of the folklore of the house?”

“Have you heard the one about the stone angels talking on the roof on Christmas Eve?”

“A slightly different version,” he informed her seriously.

“Sometimes you have to be very still and silent,” she answered, as serious, “before secrets open themselves to you.” They turned into a narrow street lined with watchmakers’ shops, their glass fronts papered with advertisements for patent escapements and custom complications.

“I believe you.” He rolled his shoulders and asked, very casually, “Do you hear any good ones about Box 5?”

“Sometimes,” she hesitated. “Sometimes in the night - before they locked it, I mean -” She bit her lip.

“You can tell me,” d’Herblay said reassuringly.

“Sometimes I used to sit there and hear…”

“Yes?”

 _“Opera,”_ she whispered darkly. D’Herblay laughed then, warm and rich and she rewarded him with a dimpled smile as she turned into a workshop and returned with a small packet of precision-cut gears.

“You were successful in cleaning the young lady’s dress, I hope?” he asked, as they paced again down a tree-lined street.

“I was,” Anne answered placidly, her boots clicking lightly on the flat cobbles, dappled shade from the trees passing lightly over her face.

“That is good to hear.”

A pause. “Some of the ink stains must have been troublesome.”

“I have an excellent receipt for shifting ink stains,” she answered.

More silence as the young man sought for something to stay, his frustration badly concealed by a mask of affability. “Sylvie is resting well at the Valerious house?” he said at last.

“To my knowledge she is resting well,” Anne answered, her own affable mask very comfortable to wear, long worn in with use. “You are kind to ask.”

Aramis stopped suddenly. “I think you should know,” he said soberly as she turned to look at him, still and straight with the bulk of the Opera House behind him. “I think you should know that Mlle Baudin is a very dear friend of mine. Though I have not seen her in years, with some people the affection does not fade.”

“I believe you,” Anne said, and found that she was giving him one of her real smiles, small and hurting.

“If I had a sister,” he continued, “I could not be more concerned.”

“You really do remind me of my husband,” she surprised herself by saying.

He smiled himself, small and soft. “A lucky man.”

“Not really,” she remarked dryly. “He died.” At the question in his eyes she added, “Badly. Bravely. It doesn’t really matter anymore.”

He touched her hand, very lightly, and she let him.

After a breath, she remembered herself and took back her basket. She gave him another smile, sweet and dimpled and affable. “I must leave you here,” she said, and turned into the door of a little cafe.

Aramis followed her, but in the crowd of patrons milling inside, the humbly-dressed concierge had managed, instantly, to disappear.

He sagged back against the wall, resisting the urge to knock his head against it. It was the same cafe he had left a half hour earlier, the Golden Lotus on the Rue Scribe, but in that time the crowd had shifted. The maid and the journalist in their quiet conversation had gone. The Persian, Porthos, sat calmly at one of the little tables grimly sipping coffee, his dark great-coat not entirely hiding the fact that he was soaked to the very skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Doesn’t this guy have a friendly face? https://thelaithlyworm.tumblr.com/post/168905277819/marc-warren-as-m-enrique-rochefort-friendly (I first saw Marc Warren in an adaptation of _Ballet Shoes_ where he was playing _sweet_ very hard, so finding some of his other roles was… a bit of a shock.)


	11. Shadow Play

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Any bits of back-story regarding Athos, Porthos, and the Governor’s Wife are entirely fictitious. Mazandaran is a real province though, on the Caspian sea: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazandaran_Province

“I am a very boring man,” Aramis mused, sitting on an impromptu divan and leaning back against the dull cushions set against the wall. “A competent sailor, I’ll grant you. Adequate at hydrography. But seafaring is more hard slog and less adventure than the stories make out. It’s land where the complication lies.”

“I think you were complicated in your cradle,” said Porthos, turning his back as he eased out of his great-coat. It was only a few minutes since the Frenchman had put a hand on his wrist in the cafe and said, low and earnest, _Please don’t disappear._ So they had gone together to Porthos’ dusty rented rooms in the Rue de Rivoli, for he did not want another conversation while dripping if he had a choice in the matter. Which he did.

In the narrow horse-glass perched in the corner he saw Aramis put his hand on his chest as his eyes widened in shocked innocence. “It’s true. I am the mildest of men, a simple sailor on furlough and already in far over my head with these obscure dealings.”

Porthos laughed softly and hung the heavy wool on a wooden peg. His clothes were cold now, sticking clammily to his skin. He stepped behind a dressing screen decorated with pastoral scenes in indifferent shades of green, brown, and murk, and worked at the tiny buttons of his waistcoat. After a moment he stopped and moved to tilt the mirror slightly away.

Aramis glanced sidelong at the shadows of the other man cast on the wallpaper by a little lamp and shrugged silently. “What brings you to Paris?” he asked.

“Why shouldn’t I?” the Persian asked. “It’s good enough for the _shah…_ Persia can stand another tourist.”

Aramis smiled. “It certainly can.”

The shadow man stripped off his tailored jacket and his waistcoat and began to work at his shirt cuffs, then gave up in frustration. Aramis shot his eyes away from the shadow play as the living man stepped out from the screen and offered up his mighty wrists. Aramis’ fingers were nimble and precise easing the starched linen over the pearlescent buttons and he absolutely did not run a teasing thumb over the tender skin of the man’s inner wrist. Porthos nodded a brief thanks and disappeared behind the screen again.

“What do you do, when you’re not sightseeing in foreign climes?”

“I was a _dārugheh,”_ Porthos said, stripping out of the clinging peel of his shirt.

Aramis squinted, sorting through his scant Farsi. “A… policeman?” he hazarded.

In a gap in the screen he caught a glimpse of a twinkling, dimpled smile. “‘Magistrate’ is a better word.” Aramis moved to rise in respect, but a solid brown arm appeared suddenly, gesturing him down. “Oh, no no,” Porthos said apologetically. “Don’t fuss. I’m retired, anyway.”

“That sounds like an ‘it’s complicated’,” Aramis said softly, looking again at the shadow on the wall - a man in his prime. Shadow Porthos paused, hands at his waist.

“If I said I was hunting a man?”

“A friend?”

The shadow bent his head.

“But… not entirely an enemy, either,” Aramis concluded.

Porthos shucked off his trousers briskly and wrapped himself in a robe which revealed itself, when he had left the screen, to be a garment of rich reds and blues shot with gold thread, brilliant against the dim room and rented furnishings. And then he veritably _bustled_ with a tiny samovar brought in by his servant, a one-eyed man called Florian, slowly brewing black tea and dried rose petals and insisting Aramis down several cups before saying, meditatively, “Athos acted within the law. I can’t ever forget that.”

 

**

 

Piano wasn’t really Sylvie’s instrument - voice of course, and violin from her father - but she had picked up enough at the Valerious house, and later her grey years at the Conservatory, to pick through the Orpheus and Eurydice duet she’d found unfinished in Athos’ music room.

It was set on the stairway out of Hades, with the two lovers calling to each other as they climbed. On balance Sylvie liked the low voice given to Eurydice: it spoke of an experienced woman and not a flimsy ingenue, a woman who knew what it was to bear pain. She tinkered with the two voice lines as they twined around each other, trading the melodies back and forth. Now it was the woman who promised flowers and dawning sun, now the man who worried that he was nothing but a beloved image, a shade that would disappear if examined too closely. She experimented further, adding a third line for Hades, dissonant and rough but not unkind. It was still an unhappy, doubting song, shying away from the promised ending.

“I wanted something better for you,” said Athos from the doorway. He wore a simple black domino mask now, and his rough lion’s-mane hair shadowed what was left of his face. He looked at her full on, though, and had one of Sylvie’s dresses draped over the crook of his arm. A large basket in his other hand creaked with the weight it held.

From the shelf behind Sylvie’s head, and an unnoticed shadow under a chair, the two cats slithered into view and wound around Athos’ legs, and were ignored as he laid the simple dress and the basket on the body of the piano. Her dress smelled of chemicals from recent cleaning; the cotton underthings in the basket were still folded, with tacking stitches holding them neat and stiff and paper tags from the _Printemps_ department store dangling off them. Sylvie’s fingers paused on a stiff rectangle the size of a visiting card hidden between two layers of cloth, then went on. Underneath was a set of toiletries and handkerchiefs, probably packed by a woman, and a collection of food in tins and jars, enough for two or three days, and packets of fragrant tea tied with string.

“Am I Persephone now, afraid to eat your food?” she asked.

Looking guiltily up from where he had started to rub behind his cats’ ears, Athos said, testily, “You were poisoned. It is sensible to be careful about such things.”

“But you don’t know by _whom…”_

Athos stilled, and one of his cats shoved against his hand. “Are you asking me to intervene on your behalf?” he said carefully.

Sylvie regarded what she could see of his face, the set of his shoulders.

“I don’t think I will,” she said. “Will you take me home if I ask?”

“Of course.” His shoulders shifted again.

“Maybe I’ll stay another couple of days,” she mused.

“As you like,” he said indifferently.

When Sylvie returned to the piano she segued the unfinished song into Offenbach’s comic, raucous “Infernal Galop”, and watched him choke.

 

**

 

Tobacco was permissible again, so Porthos offered the Frenchman a narrow cigar when he was done with the tea and watched the man’s long clever fingers trim it and spark it alight. He could believe that Aramis had worked for his living. Punctilious and smooth as he kept his hair, his hands, there was an old scar on one knuckle and Porthos had felt the callus on the underside of the fingers when he gave him the cigar - a persistent toughness not sanded away in case it was needed for later. And yet, the man’s hands were gentle. Porthos wondered how they would feel to his lov-

“I am enjoined to be still and silent,” Aramis said reflectively, letting a tendril of smoke escape his mouth, “and that if I can manage this then secrets may come to me. My genius lies neither in stillness nor silence, but I can keep a secret, if it would help you to know.”

“I believe you,” Porthos said, and sparked a tiny smile in the corner of the other man’s mouth. He lit his own cigar. “I was in the service of the governor of Mazandaran, a province on the Caspian Sea, or rather, in the service of the governor’s wife. He was…”

“Deeply in love?”

“That’s one way of putting it. He put his seal on the orders, but everyone knew where they came from.”

“A woman of sense is far from the worst advisor I’ve seen.”

“My Lady was a woman of… _something,”_ Porthos said, his mouth twisting. He paused, puffing on his own cigar. “Mazandaran is a beautiful place, from the tall hills to the sea and all the tiny rivers in between. And it has its own wealth. It wasn’t hard to attract foreign advisors and curiosities: bridge-builders and engineers, Russian cossacks to train the cavalry, a calligrapher from Nanking. Useful people, colourful people, you know?” Aramis nodded, still and silent. “One of them was a Frenchman, Athos, an architect and a composer, with half the world under his feet and pockets full of stories. He was a little ugly -” Porthos gestured to his lip - “and I think she liked that, too. She delighted in him, and he loved her.”

“He built things for her?”

“He was her executioner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _horse glass_ \- a long mirror set in a supporting frame (the horse) that lets it be swivelled and moved easily. Also called a “cheval glass”: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheval_glass
> 
> // _it's good enough for the shah_ \- that is, Naser al Din of the Qajar Dynasty, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naser_al-Din_Shah_Qajar - first modern Persian monarch to visit Europe, in 1873 and later. Had reformist tendencies (not always popular), centralised government a bit, and sold several trade and building concessions off to foreign concerns _(really_ unpopular).
> 
> // _he absolutely did not run a teasing thumb over the tender skin of the man’s inner wrist_ \- button and hand porn written by special request of my beta, Daisy Ninja Girl.
> 
> // _“I was a dārugheh.”_ \- this is straight out of book canon. 
> 
> // _Tobacco was permissible again_ \- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Protest


	12. Catherine de Garouville Begins to Sweat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Things are heating up over in Anathema Device's companion piece: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13281189/chapters/30550266 Can't wait to see the next chapter.)

Mild though the weather was, Phillipe-Achille Feron’s manservant had stoked the fire in his new office high and sultry. He settled now in a rather gaudy chair, covered in green velvet plush and stuffed to his specifications, with a weary sigh, and drank deep from a silver goblet of heated wine and… various additions.

“This cannot be borne,” insisted Louis Bourbon, crashing through the side door with an immense ledger in his arms. Bourbon nudged his silver-rimmed spectacles firmly up his nose and glared at his business partner. “Have you _seen_ all the make-work positions that have been foisted upon us? Men who do nothing but open and close doors downstairs, _far_ more curtain-pullers than a sane man would find necessary, one-legged grooms - did you know we have a stable, Feron? Did you? It includes a donkey and three trained _sheep._ I don’t even want to know about what the rat problem must be for what we’re spending on it. And we’re _paying_ those grubby little dancers we’re already providing a good education to, _free_ of charge, when some of them aren't even performing on stage yet -”

“It was to be expected,” Feron said soothingly, “places like these always have a few sinecures attached. Perhaps a Cultural Attache wants to provide for an old veteran who served him a good turn, or a byblow or what-not. Rather than touch his purse, he might trade a small favour with an operation such as this, that has room for a few miscellaneous staff.”

“So _we_ pay for it instead,” Bourbon groused, “shall we set up a station for selling pencils by the Subscribers’ Pavilion, while we’re at it?”

“And then there’s the question of misleading job descriptions,” Feron mused, turning his goblet with aching fingers. The wine in it was cooling. “It's best to be a little cautious and find out who actually does what before, hm, cutting out the deadwood.”

Bourbon frowned at him, uncertain. Then, quick as lightning, the silver spectacles vanished off his nose as the outer door opened and the Paris Opera Company’s prima donna, the Great de Garouville swept in from the hall trailing luxurious furs.

“This is an outrage!” she cried.

“Ah,” Feron said, his mobile lips widening into a broad smile. “Mademoiselle! I see your throat has improved.”

She choked, and said, suddenly faint, “It is only the turmoil of my feelings that torments me so." Hand lifted limply to her throat she added, “I can only guess at what damage has been caused just now. Oh, I’m frightened.”

She was a thin woman, delicately boned, with her ginger hair brightened by masterful hands to a magnificent auburn and her eyes shone blue and glassy (crystalline, it was said in her reviews). With a gesture as practiced as it was unconscious, she adjusted her fur wrap in the unexpected heat.

“Indeed, indeed,” Feron said affably, not rising to his feet. “And how may your new managers be of assistance this late in the day?”

“Your new opera,” she said, modulating her voice softly but with intensity. “You truly think to put on _La Cenerentola?_ A hearth-tale about the little ash-girl? Ridiculous! No-one will take you seriously.”

Bourbon opened his mouth, shut it, looked at de Garouville, and then at Feron. Then he said, “Creative decisions are M. Feron’s affair,” and, with a turn as unconscious as it was practiced, swept into his adjoining office, the ledger of memoranda still wrapped in his arms.

“Oh, _oh,”_ said Feron sympathetically, still not rising. “But here I was trying to be gracious and a little humble, for our first affair. A pretty little tale - I love the Italians, so sweet.”

“It would not show off your best singers in their flattering ranges,” de Garouville said warily.

“Ah! You have it on the nose, Mademoiselle. I meant you to sing _Cliorinda,_ one of the sisters. A far less taxing role. I have great sympathy for your throat, you cannot imagine, if it were ruined through overwork so soon after an illness I would never forgive myself. Not ever.”

“And who would you replace me with,” she asked, a razor edge coming up through the sugar floss of her voice, “the understudy? You must know that Baudin girl is unreliable.”

“Oh, perhaps,” Feron said cheerfully. “But this is well before the official Welcome In and I understand the occasional bout of nerves. I’ve been looking through the records,” he added, still smiling. “A lot of the understudies and young singers come down with ‘nerves’. Or broken ankles. Or disappear for three months and then they’re heard of in Milan, such a _loss_ to our humble company when we, as experts in our field, want to be _bringing on_ the young ones, creating in them a legacy of craft. You understand, I’m sure.”

“I have a contract,” said the Great de Garouville.

“You do,” said Feron, his smile broadening, “and I have read every sub-clause.” The singer’s ringed hand jerked spasmodically against the rich fur held about her. Through the light powder she wore during the day, a sheen of perspiration brightened her complexion. Feron waved a long-figured hand negligently. “If the Baudin girl is as unreliable as you say, I’m sure we can borrow someone of the appropriate range for a few days. As creative director the health of the cast is my concern and _I want your beautiful throat to be healthy._ My dear. If all goes _well_ then I’m sure whatever follows _Cenerentola_ will showcase your talents... magnificently.”

Very low, de Garouville said, “I have never been so threatened and abused in my _life.”_

“Please, my dear: go home. Rest. Recuperate. We shall be most glad to see you at the official Welcome In.”

When the door had slammed behind her he heard his fellow manager call through the thin wood of his office door, “What was that about?”

“A dog that bites can still be useful,” Feron replied, “just so long as it knows who its master is.” He drank deep from his goblet.

“What did you say, Feron?”

“Don’t you worry your head, Louis,” Feron said more loudly, and wiped the opium-laced wine off his mouth.

As the drug brought a gentle warmth to his bones - finally - he heard a shriek through the door. “The Opera Ghost wants _how_ much a month?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _La Cenerentola_ \- an operatic version of Cinderella by Rossini (the guy who did _Barber of Seville)_ with the libretto by Jacopo Feretti. Like many of Rossini’s operas, the heroine is best sung by a mezzo-soprano or coloratura contralto (really not de Garouville’s range, poor girl). Ref: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cenerentola


	13. Rainy Evening

That evening Constance walked the young Comte d’Artagnan along a narrow uncarpeted corridor, where the walls were covered only in white plaster and drifting scents from the internal kitchens wafted through, and up another narrow flight of wooden steps to a little studio near the roof of the great House.

She took lessons here sometimes, sharpening her technique under the exacting tutelage of the dance mistress Ninon de Larroque, and she gave them, too, to a handful of younglings, for she had never forgotten her first mentor’s stricture to give back to the Art. This bare room with clean-scrubbed floorboards, a simple barre, a plain cabinet and bench against one wall - not a trace of elegance in it - was as close to Constance’s territory as it was possible to get.

Ah, but there was elegance here after all. The young comte kept his eyes nobly upwards as he followed the young woman up the stairs, admiring her straight back and easy swinging stride. La Bonacieux did not use the dark knee-length skirt favoured by the noble and gentlewomen d’Artagnan had seen about their own clubs, but instead wore a worn and easy pair of woollen breeches under a brass-buttoned linen fencing jacket. Her queue of tightly braided auburn hair slipped over one shoulder as she bent to retrieve a pair of light practice foils from the cupboard and tossed d’Artagnan a pair of man-size fencing slippers. “These should fit,” she said.

They did, just about. He wriggled his toes in the open-fronted slipper on his right foot and noted with curiosity that it didn’t have the extended sole that he was used to. La Bonacieux herself wore simple soft dance shoes bound around her ankles with wide ribbon. She grinned at him, eyes teasing, and handed him a foil hilt first. “Show me the strength of your Maestro’s teaching.”

He held up one hand, and answered, “I don’t know, I don’t want to knock you over or anything.”

Her grin broadened as she swept the light, blunt foil into an elaborate salute. Overhead a thin rattle began as rain started to fall, tapping and resounding on the roof and window of the little studio.

D’Artagnan grinned back, “Very well.” Even so he hesitated after his own salute, wary of hitting a woman too hard. La Bonacieux lunged at him.

 

**

 

“He was her executioner.”

At the Persian’s words Aramis thrust himself upright, or tried, but Porthos’ hand shot out to his wrist and held him. “Easy,” he said, low as one gentling a spooked horse. “Easy.”

“A killer has Sylvie Baudin captive under the Opera House and I should be ‘easy’?” Aramis hissed.

“I said it was within in the law, didn’t I? Is Sylvie a lawbreaker? Then be easy.” Porthos held the other man’s gaze and rubbed slowly at his inner wrist over the starched shirt-cuff. “Sit.” Wild-eyed, Aramis slowly sank down.

“You’re right,” Porthos said, keeping his voice low and soothing over a faint patter of outside rain, “he did build her things. Clever things, beautiful things, a house that was all trapdoors and hidden openings, clockwork toys, a forest out of bronze and steel with mirrors set about, so it was like walking through an African forest with everything going on and on and on in the sun, a pool with arched chambers underneath of steel and crystal so that she could walk among her ornamental fish and her sharks. Wondrous things. They were a delight. For all I know, they are there still.

“He’d sit on one side of the latticed screen and talk to My Lady for hours of the countries he’d seen, of the techniques and tricks he’d picked up. He was a great belly-talker - Athos could make it sound like a lamp in the corner was speaking to you, or a little bug flying about, and he made her laugh and clap her hands. ‘Beautifully ugly’ she used to call him and I don’t know why but he liked that. He wasn’t really ugly,” Porthos apostrophised, “he just had a crooked lip. He had very fine eyes, back then.”

“You were friends.”

“Good company, he was,” said Porthos. “Quiet. I could startle a smile out of him sometimes.” He released Aramis’ wrist and looked down at his own hands, large, clever, capable. “One day he told her about a lasso he’d learned to throw when he was travelling in the Punjab region. It’s a tricky little thing - you need silk cord and a special slip knot, and it’s murder flicking it out right. So of course she wanted him to show her.”

\- the heat, the scent of dry earth, sunlight on the trees piercing his eyes -

“They were convicts,” Porthos said after a while. “I’d sentenced them myself. They were wicked men. It was inside of the law and it was a mercy, compared with what was coming to them.”

“Madame la Guillotine was considered a mercy,” said the Frenchman quietly. “Once.”

“She told them she’d give them a chance in the metal forest and if they found the exit they’d go free, and she put Athos in there with them, in the heat of the day.”

\- the slither of the cord on the ground, Athos’ hunched shoulders -

“It was very neat. He made sure it was a mercy.”

\- the Lady’s pale hands clapping together, as she cried, “Do it again!” -

“I can’t talk about this anymore,” said Porthos.

 

**

 

Chest heaving like a bellows, d’Artagnan twisted his wrists and forced his opponent’s sword into a bind, forcing her back. Face bright red, La Bonacieux swore at him in gutter French before acknowledging defeat and disengaging. She paced in a brief circle around the studio, rolling her neck and shaking out her right hand before flicking her light foil in a brief salute and resuming, all the power of her legs and her exquisite control forcing him around the room in a fashion d’Artagnan hadn’t been accustomed to in… years.

He grinned like a wolf and dug in, calling on a few obscure coups his Maestro had taught him and pushing her back just a little. (His wrists were stronger, if he could get her in another bind… but she didn’t fall for it again.) It was a dance, an embrace in swirling motion, a pas de deux ornamented only by the rasp of breath, the drum of rain, the thunder of blood. Then - a beat, a feint, a sudden burst of explosive power, and she had him caught fairly in the heart, her sword curving like a half moon with the force of it.

D’Artagnan staggered back, hand to the bruised area, another to his forehead. “It is death, it is death, Maestra,” he said weakly, then staggered some more. “I must sing of the sorrows of death, the icy silence of the tomb, my heart’s passion… fading… fading… for ten minutes!”

La Bonacieux laughed fondly. “Get away with you,” she said fondly, shoving him lightly on the shoulder.

“Ai! I die!” he cried, and collapsed in a little heap on the floor.

She sat down beside him in a comfortable folding of limbs. Her face was red but already her breathing was even. “An hour every other day?” he said.

She blinked at him fondly. “That’s the time we can fit in around all the dance training.”

“Maybe I should try some,” he muttered, resting his head with a thunk against the hard wooden floor. He heard her laugh over the drumming rain.

“Hey, hey Mademoiselle Bonacieux, I like this. Can we do it again? Can we be friends?”

She nudged his shoulder again and laughed. “Course we can.”

They sat and lay in easy silence for a time, listening to the rain and the sea-sway of their breathing.

Then, “Oh, but it’s ‘Madame’,” said Constance casually.

D’Artagnan opened one eye. “You’re married?”

 

**

 

Aramis unfolded himself from the makeshift divan. The Persian sat still, his shoulders as broad and straight, his eyes as forthright, but something in him seemed hunched and cramped, nursing an aching wound. He squeezed the man’s shoulder companionably and stepped outside onto the little wrought-iron balcony in the newcome evening, where a small wayward breeze cooled the heat of the day and sparks of rain dropped onto his face. Paris stretched out like a brilliant carpet below him, her black buildings and her bleary lights outlining each other. The clouds overhead caught the light also, throwing it back as a sullen, rosy red. It was too wet out here to smoke, so Aramis just stood there as the damp and fug of a large city rose around him. And he breathed.

After a time he… _felt_ more than heard the big man step out, light on his feet as a cat, but there was a warmth to him. Without looking back Aramis held out his hand, palm open, as to welcome a new comrade.

Porthos took it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // A couple of pics of what period female fencers liked to wear here: https://thelaithlyworm.tumblr.com/post/169644494809/from-httpvictorianfencingsocietyblogspotconz 
> 
> // Fencing slippers - https://thelaithlyworm.tumblr.com/post/169635186059/fencing-shoes-one-of-the-more-curious-parts-of-the 
> 
> // Not actually a fencer, so I cribbed a lot of ‘what makes Constance good’ from this answer here: https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-take-to-be-good-at-fencing-What-skills-should-you-be-good-at-is-there-a-specific-build-that-is-best-suited-for-fencing-etc


	14. Cat's Paw

One morning - a little of the daylight could be divined from a grate high overhead, an opening into the Rue Scribe - Sylvie sat on the edge of the dark lake watching tiny ripples spread from a few raindrops fallen through the grate. She dabbled her toes and watched more silent rings spread outward. In one of her pockets she felt again a hard square of pasteboard card.

It was a simple thing, the sort of visiting card men who travelled had made up for them every time they reached a new city: _Aramis René, Chevalier d’Herblay_ and the address of a couple of rooms in an expensive hotel. He was doing well for himself, for a boy who’d run barefoot all summer and part of the winter when his mother couldn’t afford shoes...

She dipped two fingers into her pocket and retrieved it, turning it over idly. There was no message written on it, and once again she wondered what her old friend had meant by it - _I know where you are and approve,_ perhaps? Or, _No time to write and no-one knows I sent this,_ more likely. If he’d meant that he was searching for her, then it must have been a frustrating couple of days and Sylvie had been unkind… Maybe the young man wanted to say, _I am here. I haven’t forgotten you._

Huffing, she pulled her bare feet out of the lake and padded briskly through the maze of rooms that Athos called a house, leaving footprints written in water behind her. And she found him in the forest of metal trees, a clot of darkness at the foot of an iron oak tree.

“Ghost, Ghost,” she said softly and the bundle of dark cloth he was wrapped in stirred. A bare foot poked out of the cloth, then his white face and black mask revealed itself.

“Sylvie.” He smiled softly at her as his eyes opened, then frowned. “You shouldn’t be here; not in this room.”

She crouched, sitting on her feet on sand that was unnaturally, comfortably warm. “I need to go home soon,” she said. “I wanted to talk a little, before…”

He nodded gruffly and sat a little taller against the tree. The silver flask that was always about his person appeared, touched his lips. One of the cats crawled out from under his dark cloak, blinked drowsily at Sylvie, then walked away, ignoring them both. “I would ask, ‘Must you?’ but that is a fool’s query,” he said softly.

“I liked the dancing last night.”

He blinked at her in puzzlement, what she could see of his eyes behind the black leather mask. Then, “You are most welcome.”

“You don’t remember it at all,” she said, teasing. His mouth shut. “Sorry,” she said, contrite.

“Sylvie. I would not have you say ‘sorry’ for all the world,” he breathed, lifting a hand.

She touched his fingers, delicate for a man, and said, wonderingly, “It’s always so warm in here.”

“Pipes from a boiler under and over the room, and of course the mirrors keep the heat in,” he said, a clipped, matter-of-fact architect’s answer. “Picturesque, but not technically difficult.”

“It means more to you than that, you’re always sleeping in this forest. Does the heat help your - well. Do you need less of the opium when you’re in here?”

After a time, a moment stretched out achingly, he said, “the drug makes me forget, sometimes. I come back here to remember.” He looked out into the mirrored trees, and the mirrored faces. They stood silent around him.

Sylvie touched his arm. Through the layers of black cloth it was rigid with tension.

One of his cats came back - she still could not tell them apart - flaunting, tail-high, with a bit of fluff in her mouth. Athos watched, impassive, as she dropped it and the fluff uncurled into a terrified mouse, running through the sand. Delighted the little black cat chased it, dashing among the forest of steel and iron and bronze, scrabbling around turns, catching it and dropping it and vaunting in exultation when she caught it again.

“She has no moral sense,” Athos said dully. “It isn’t that she delights in the mouse’s suffering; she doesn't think of it at all. She is an innocent.”

The cat misjudged and ran headfirst into the solid metal-backed mirror which rang like a muted gong when she hit it. The mouse escaped; the cat slunk back to Athos to be comforted with his gentle hand on the back of her neck. Settling down on her belly, she began to purr under his touch.

“Who died?” Sylvie asked, guessing.

"A young woman,” Athos said musingly. “Samara bint Tariq Alaman. She was a poet and a musician, and a writer of satires. She had a great appetite for justice.” He settled his back against the oak with the cat leaning heavily against his thigh.

“Were you lovers?” Sylvie asked hesitantly.

She heard the rustle of hair as he shook his head slightly. “No. There was another woman whom I loved. I knew Samara bint Tariq through a friend and he - might have been Samara’s lover in time. But she was young, fierce like a little kestrel. And her words did not find favour with - they offended - the court.”

“It sounds like I would have liked her.”

“She was lost in a place like this, trapped, and the heat was rising.” Athos’ eyelids dipped. “I was not as kind as I should have been. So she took her own life with a noose tied from a tree branch.” Sylvie moved to hold him and he caught her wrist, firm and inescapable, until she shifted away. “Be sure your sins will find you out,” he muttered, nudging the mask where it rubbed against the ruin that lay underneath it, “and sometimes we burn for them. Sylvie, do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then leave here and don’t ever come back.”

“I would not hear you say that for all the world,” she answered.

“Please.”

“Will you come visit, and talk to me through the wall again?”

He was silent.

Sylvie stood, blinking back tears that had come stinging to her eyes. “I will try to respect your feelings,” she said, low and gruff, “but I make no promises.

“You know where the boat is,” he said dryly. “Once you reach the other side, follow the path of flowers upwards.”

As she turned to go, she heard him unbuckle his mask.

 

**

 

For days the Great de Garouville had raged, red-faced and furious, until her dresser, and her hair stylist, and her maid all thought she would make herself ill. From the boudoir of her luxurious apartment, where Catherine flung gilt-backed hair brushes and tortoise-shell combs, bottles of lotion and jewelled tiaras, little bottles of belladonna eye drops and soft hares’ feet, little Margaret Sal the maid fled, sobbing.

She wrapped a dull woollen shawl over her head and shoulders and stepped into the rainy streets, one of hundreds - thousands - of overworked, worried women in the streets of gilded Paris. She nearly walked into the path of an omnibus in her distraction, the irritable driver swerving his horses away and passengers on the open top deck booing at her as the vehicle swayed drastically. One plump woman in a tailored jacket and a flowery hat clung to the rail and stared after the girl, frowning. But these things happen in Paris every day.

When she reached the little Golden Lotus cafe and saw her friend, elegant and straight-backed, through the glass window she swallowed hard and turned inside. He leapt to his feet when he saw her - so noble, so attentive. When he took her hand her composure broke and tears flowed like fountains.

“I really think she might kill me, someday,” she said to him.

He wrapped his strong and gentle arms around her. “Shh, shh,” said M. Rochefort. “I will protect you. Only do as I say, and everything will be fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Margaret Sal is, as you may have guessed, Marguerite from s2, given a slightly different forename to keep her from getting mixed up with the opera character. I stole her surname from Anathema Device, by the by.
> 
> // I've just started watching the 1990 miniseries they did starring Charles Dance. It's, ah, different, but the music is pretty. 
> 
> https://youtu.be/RRZMwIPEbLE


	15. Smile

On the black lake Sylvie stood barefoot in a fine wooden gondola and sculled the long steering oar through the still water. When the dim light from overhead showed that she was near the hard stone verge she let the oar rest in its carved _forcola_ oar-lock and drifted the last few metres. She hopped nimbly to solid ground and fastened its leading rope to a metal ring set in one of the pillars, and she walked, following a stone rose carved high in a dusty cornice, a chalk-scrawled fleur-de-lis on the ground, a garland of silk flowers, moldering and old, nailed over the lintel of a tiny stable where some might set a lucky horse-shoe.

Old Cesar the white show horse nickered cheerfully at her from the manger where he had been chewing fragrant hay and walked towards her. He put out one foreleg and bowed deeply, and Sylvie smiled at him. Cesar rose up with grave dignity and held still when the girl stepped towards him and buried her face in his neck. She stood there silently for a time, too proud to cry, and Cesar had far too much wisdom and manners to complain about the way she shook against him.

When he bowed and dipped again, Sylvie flung a leg over his back and let him, without saddle or bridle, carry her back to sunlight. She didn’t look back once.

 

**

 

“Of course, of course,” M. Bourbon said briskly, not looking back, “a nice visual for your article, to commemorate our Welcome In.”

“An exclusive,” said M. Rochefort, trotting down the wood-panelled hallway after the manager, his photographer’s tripod perched uneasily over his shoulder and the heavy camera and the flash on its stand bundled in his arms.

“Your journal will be granting us a discount for advertising,” Louis Bourbon said sharply, “if we grant you an exclusive.”

“I don't imagine that will be a problem,” Rochefort said smoothly, blithely dismissing his lack of influence in _Le Petit Parisien’s_ financial department. “I thought, as well as your main cast - the stars in your firmament and so forth - a few of the lesser workers, stagehands and concierges and set painters in a double-page engraving. There’s been quite a fashion for pictures of rustics this last year.”

“Whatever for?” asked M. Bourbon blankly.

“Oh, I quite see your point,” M. Feron leaned heavily on his cane as he came out of his office to join them.” M. Bourbon slowed his step. “There can be a fascination with the people who scurry along in the shadows, not so? A sense of compassion - a warmth - in giving them a brief moment in the sun. But I doubt all our cherished workers would squeeze onto the stage. There must be a limit to your ambition.”

“Some candid shots,” offered Rochefort. “Perhaps a series, to show the face behind the polished mask of the Opera. Audiences love that sort of thing.”

“I should _quite_ think that our excellent productions should make the audience love us,” said M. Bourbon frostily. M. Feron lifted one ironic eyebrow and Bourbon waved one fair white hand. “Oh very well, you can come by again with that contraption but you’re not to interfere with any work.”

Rochefort assured him that interference was something he would never presume on, and then, to give appropriate precedence, prevailed upon them to stop that he might set up his apparatus to take an impromptu shot of the new managers ‘about their workday’. Louis smiled brightly, showing all of his white teeth.

 

**

 

“No, d’Artagnan,” said La Bonacieux. “No, my husband isn’t coming to the reception _either.”_ She smiled, or at least, showed a lot of teeth.

The young comte lifted his hands appeasingly to the woman who stood before him in a ruffled shirtwaist and dark-sapphire skirt. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I just don’t want to interfere in your marriage or, or anything like that. He isn’t sick, is he?”

“As far as I know,” she said tightly, “he’s in very good health. Out in the provinces. Which I pay him a little pension so he _stays_ there.”

D’Artagnan stood still, his velvety dark eyes quietly tragic under sooty eyebrows.

She touched his cheek kindly. “It’s not easy getting a divorce. Not if you’re a woman.”

“Did he b-”

“If I’d had bruises to show, I’d have had less trouble,” she said bluntly. “I’m not talking about this, and I’m not talking about why I married Jacques-Michel in the first place. I don’t owe you any answers.”

“Of course you don’t,” he said firmly. “Because we’re just friends, and friends don’t pry.”

“Yes! Friends!”

“Exactly!”

“Why are we shouting?!”

 

**

 

“I don’t know,” said Therese thoughtfully, kicking her feet through the bars of the balcony rail. “I quarrel with both of you all the time and it doesn’t mean anything.”

Fleur snaked one arm over Therese’s blue-jacketed shoulder and stole a dragee from a paper packet in her lap. “Neither of them are _walking away,”_ she said. “Have they kissed yet?”

Simone looked up from a little book. “Not in public.”

“A sou that nothing happens until October.”

“Done.” Simone tucked her book into the pocket of her own brass-buttoned, short-waisted blue jacket, smoothed out her best skirt, and then batted wide eyes at Therese. “Can I, of your favour, can I have one too?”

“See?” said Therese accusingly to Fleur, _”some_ people ask for my sweets nicely. After I paid for them with my own money and everything.” Simone settled on the the varnished floor and laid her head on Therese’s lap, mouth open like a little bird’s. “Maybe I should get a rich boyfriend,” she said indulgently, popping one of the little hard candies into her friend’s mouth, “he’d take me for promenades in the park and I’d give you all the sweets you could eat.”

“She’d get fat,” Fleur said sharply.

Simone looked up at her friend. “You don’t need a boyfriend,” she said, very solemn.

“We’re sweet enough already,” agreed Fleur, and Therese’s thin lips widened in a smile.

 

**

 

Old Cesar was a liberty horse, sweet-tempered and long accustomed to working without saddle or bridle, and he took all of his young rider’s attempts to steer him with her legs with a level of polite disdain that Sylvie had last seen in her guardian Mama Valerious’s house. _You expect me to use_ tallow _candles? I’d rather eat with my fingers like a Mohock than use anything but proper silver. Oh, dear, no, you mustn’t..._ When he reached a column of narrow stone steps, he seemed very keen to prove the old truism that horses could climb _up_ stairs, at least. She sighed and gave the old beast his head as he turned around corners she hadn’t thought possible. When a fat rat skittered across his path, all the fuss that he made was one ear-twitch before continuing on, ignoring the dark man in a battered cloak and slouch hat watching from a side corridor.

There was a faint thread of melody coming from overhead, in one of the basements that stored painted flats for the sets - not Athos’ voice of angels, or even the full and measured chords of the orchestra, but a little scratchy fiddle purling out reels and jigs and rondelays. Fairground music, it was, the kind her father liked to play in the summer without ever a scrap of written music in view. A string popped and she heard a _very_ familiar voice mourn, “I’m no Orpheus.” A bass rumble reassured him.

“Is that you, Aramis?”

Cesar turned a corner and she saw two men sitting on the steps of another basement, near the pulleys that could haul the larger stored scenery. One of them leapt to his feet, dropping violin and bow. “Sylvie!” Aramis cried, striding to her and taking her hand. Behind him the larger man she knew vaguely as the Persian got to his feet and nodded slightly. “Alright there, young mademoiselle?” he asked and she nodded, smiling through sudden tears.

 

**

 

Most of the official reception, the Welcome In, took place in the Dancer’s Salon, a wide open area appropriate for many guests. Louis Bourbon looked over the crowd of the Opera House’s regular cast and its other employees buzzing around like the worker bees they were. Among them the wealthy subscribers, whose expensive boxes and other donations would help the company run, wandered about in beautifully tailored suits and hats like tall, midnight flowers. He kept a wary eye out that the subscribers did not inadvertently have to speak to any of the _lesser_ people but otherwise looked on the event with satisfaction - his first as the official host, the King Bee of the hive.

He clapped his hands above his head and, when the quiet had spread around him, said grandly, “It is truly lovely to see you all here. I welcome… our beautiful cast, and the loveliest of them all the Great de Garamonde.” Catherine, wan and interesting in a drapery of forest green, dropped into a deep courtesy, the plumes in her hair dipping forward outrageously. He named their other (ruinously expensive) contracted leads and frowned slightly - the Baudin girl had not seen fit to make an appearance. So she _was_ unreliable. “I welcome… our wonderful guests,” he said, twinkling to the subscribers, meeting their eyes. “And I am delighted to announce the first opera of our season, Rossini’s beautiful -” His eyes darted to Feron, who mouthed the words and Bourbon continued smoothly - _“La Cenerentola!”_ There was an interested murmur from the crowd, those already in the know and those who were not, and Bourbon beamed: A good choice.

“And lastly,” he continued brightly, “I must usher away the little crew of our Ship of Song, for we are making a small offering to posterity in the form of a photograph en masse _._ It will of course be appearing in the next issue of _Le Petit Parisien,_ but also,” he said, expanding on an idea that had come to him only this morning, “this year we will be planting a time capsule in the foundations of the House. It will contain both the photograph taken today, and wax cylinder recordings taken from the greatest singers of our age.

“We live in the moment,” he said somberly, his planned speech forgotten. “All our arts are bright flowers thrown into the black sea that is time and their lot is to pass away. But. Sometimes we can take a stand. Sometimes we can say to the generations that follow us, _This is who we are. We were here.”_ To the suddenly sober crowd he said, more brisk, “Enough philosophy. Spit spot!”

The stage had been dressed in a lofty mountain set, with blue sky behind painted with clouds and sweep-winged birds (so realistic) and flats that were grey crags set about to add height and interest to the scene. The players crowded in - Messrs. Bourbon and Feron, the Great de Garouville, the lead tenors and basses, La Bonacieux the principal danceuse, the leader of the orchestra, and Ninon, willow-tall, willow-supple dance mistress, all gathered about in the high seats in the middle. At their feet, sitting cross-legged on the ground in their full, short skirts and brass-buttoned jackets, were all the little dancers, and by them the singers in the chorus, and crowding all around were stagehands and the men who lifted sets in the flies, and the girls who sold oranges and peanuts among the crowds too poor to rent their own boxes, and the sewers, and the carpenters, and the painters, and the broken-down old men whose sole job was to make sure that doors that needed to be shut, stayed shut, and all the multitude that made a night at the opera happen…

Down to his shirt-sleeves, the journalist Rochefort busied himself with the camera. He glared at the scene fiercely. One of the concierges was holding a handkerchief to her face, holding off a sneeze. Suddenly she looked, startled, to the right.

It was then that Sylvie came in on a pale stage horse, flanked by Aramis d’Herblay and Porthos Nikbin. Cesar, old trooper that he was, held his head very high.

(“Oh brava,” said M. Bourbon softly, “what a nicely dramatic entrance. Wonderful copy, that will make. What a lovely girl…”)

Clearly believing that he was in a performance, Cesar trotted to a long-ago-memorised mark. Smiling wryly, Sylvie patted the side of his neck. Cesar put a solid white foreleg to the front, and dropped into a deep courtesy.

The camera flashed.

The cast and crew erupted into laughter and talk. “Another slide, if you please,” said M. Rochefort, calmly but firmly, and set up another negative in his machine.

“Patience, children,” said M. Bourbon kindly, and gestured them still. His smile broadened as they settled at his gestures - all but one thing, an odd, awkward knocking. “Enough,” said Bourbon, growing more sharp.

“A poltergeist?” someone muttered. “No, the Phantom,” they were answered, “he must be unsettled by all this…” The knocking increased, then a ragged cry tore from the throat of the journalist, Rochefort, as one of the ‘crag’ flats toppled slowly forward and a woman was revealed behind it - one of the maids, her intricately braided hair straggled into disarray by the knotted cloth that wrapped around her throat, choking her as she hung from it, her legs kicking with a desperation born of the last of her vitality.

The journalist was an agile man. He leapt lithely to the stage, a knife flashed in his hand, in a trice he had cut young Margaret Sal free so that she tumbled downwards. Cradled in his arms, she looked up at his handsome rugged features gratefully as her bosom heaved, and smiled around the tears in her eyes. He gently brushed strands of pale blonde hair away from her face and asked, tenderly, “Who did this to you?”

She blinked slowly. Around the pain of her bruised throat, she whispered, “The Phantom.”

Again, the camera flashed.

 

_End of Act 1_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _in a double-page engraving_ \- In the 1890s the technology existed to print half-tone photographs in newspapers and magazines but it was still common to use them as a base for a wood-cut engraving instead. Just in case anybody is wondering about potential anachronisms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photojournalism - I don’t know what that particular journal favoured, though, or whether they would have been covering the Paris Opera Company at all.
> 
> // _“It’s not easy getting a divorce. Not if you’re a woman.”_ \- during the Revolution, divorce actually got quite easy for both genders. The _Code Napoleon_ tightened things up a fair bit and reintroduced unequal rights between genders. - https://lifetakeslemons.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/divorce-and-the-french-revolution/
> 
>  
> 
> **
> 
> Iiiiiit's soooooooo hoooooooot... I'm dying here.


	16. Act 2: Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. Haven't had much brain, the last few days.

Trains are lonely.

Even when they’re crowded, the mites of humanity jostling about each other in a ragged river, warming each other's seats, breathing each other's air, are strangers to each other, united only in the common purpose of the journey. In the off-seasons, after the festivals, in the gaps between days, passengers on a night train are a peculiar, lonely breed.

Aramis slouched back in his second-class seat and tilted his head until his temple touched the cool glass of the window. Already the gouts of bloody sunset outside were fading to darkness over the little towns they passed through and a conductor had been by, lighting the gas lamps in the carriage with brisk neat turns of his fingers before exiting with a polite but solid click of the door. The controlled thunder of the engine in front and the sway of the carriage over the sleeper rails might lull him to an early sleep.

Instead, his half-lidded eyes shifted to the only other passenger in the compartment, a silent man, much-muffled with a hat-brim tugged low and a dull scarf pulled up over his mouth.

With the peculiar intimacy that came upon the travelling and the lonely, he asked, “Going far?”

The traveller twitched. “The end of the line, and a little farther,” he said, in a voice whose husky diffidence almost hid its light richness

“Perros-Guirec, on the sea?”

“Even so.”

Aramis smiled. “I know the pink cliffs and the golden beaches well,” he said, “my mother and I passed through every summer, following the travelling fairs and the pilgrims. It has a pretty little church, which keeps its leftover bones stored very neatly around the back.”

In answer, the traveller opened his newspaper with a determined rustle and hid his face inside it.

After a moment, Aramis said, “They haven't found the murderer yet.” The traveller looked up, irritable, and glared at him with one visible eye. Aramis nodded at the gaudy front cover of the journal he was holding, a fanciful illustration of the thwarted hanging, the maid shifted to the front and centre of the stage in front of the crowd but still lying cradled in the reporter's arms. Hanging large and ominous above them was the noose, knotted from rope in the picture instead of the twisted cloth that Aramis remembered. And, of course, the shadow of the Phantom, reaching over all. “The Opera House still has gendarmes threading through it, watching as gendarmes do. (I am myself marginally connected with these events, being on stage when the poor lady was discovered, and am following them with interest.)”

“And who do you think committed the deed?”

“I really could not say,” Aramis replied, “I am a simple man, unused to the ways of theatres and of detecting. Personally I cannot see how _anyone_ could have smuggled a woman onto the stage among that crowd, knocked her off her perch, and stolen away before her struggles knocked over a painted crag.”

“Vampire traps,” the traveller said dismissively. “The technique isn't taxing. The attacker could have left very easily if he knew the theatre.”

“I am a child in these matters,” Aramis said cheerfully, then added, “I know knots, though.”

“What about the knots?” the traveller said tartly.

“An expert hangman,” mused Aramis, “aims to break the neck.” He mimed shifting the knot of the noose to behind the left ear, and a quick jerk that left his head hanging. “This conversation isn't too ghoulish for you?” A rustle of the paper and he continued. “Then there are the slip knots used most often by those who would do violence to themselves, poor souls. Strangling knots. They'll kill, but you have a bit of time to think about it first.”

“And?” the traveller said into the ensuing silence.

“And that knot was a mess. It was huge, with stray ends wrapped around, but underneath the twaddle was a bowline, a knot with a certain amount of _gravitas_ to it, uninterested in tightening its own loop.” He stared out the window at the darkening landscape for a time then said, “Poor Mlle Sal wouldn't have been able to get out with her own strength, no, but it would have taken her such a long time to die, listening to all the people around her, silent and slowly suffocating.”

“You think the Phantom likes to play with his prey?” the traveller asked, dourly.

“I think whoever tied that knot wanted time.” Aramis drummed his fingers on his leg. He'd spoken of this at length to the Police Commissioner tasked with investigating the matter, in the poky little office set aside for his work. Old M. Treville had stared at him with grim eyes that gave nothing away, then asked where Aramis himself had been fifteen minutes before the photograph, which had opened a different set of matters Aramis chose not to divulge regarding Sylvie and Porthos’ private affairs, or indeed his own, and there had been a lot of fast talking in the minutes that followed, that ended with the - unexpected? inevitable? - corroboration of the concierge Mme Mauricia that she had seen the three of them enter from the Rue Scribe entrance not long before.

 _Truly,_ the concierge was a woman who believed in smoothing out little difficulties for the patrons of the Opera company.

“And what of yourself? I know two… aficionados of the Phantom’s work who claim he would never, never ever, not to an innocent woman. Do you think Ghost did it?”

The other traveller stiffened. “I don't know,” he said softly. In the thundering quiet of the railway carriage he removed a small silver flask from his coat and drank a little of it, cautiously, before putting it away. The scarf, tugged down that he might drink, stayed down, revealing a scarred and twisted upper lip. Almost inaudible he muttered, “‘In that sleep of death what dreams may come?’”

The stranger ruffled himself like a nesting bird, leaning his own head against the glass.

Full night, now, and the darkness outside the window glass made mirrors of it, locking them in with themselves. Aramis had watched the trains as a child, skipping or trudging barefoot along the roads with his mother, watched them at night when one could see little but a row of lighted faces, like a paternoster moving through the darkness.

The stranger was more silent than a dead man.

“Cards?” Aramis asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _after the travelling fairs and the pilgrims_ \- apparently Perros-Guirec was on one of the routes of the Camino de Santiago - the prime pilgrimage route. The church is real, though I don't know if the ossuary is still there (or ever existed). They were A Thing in Brittany, sticking around there when most of the ossuaries and charnel-houses used in the Middle Ages had died (sorry) out in the rest of Europe.
> 
> Why Perros-Guirec at all? Because it's in the book.
> 
> // _vampire trap_ \- one of several trapdoor used in theatres in that century, consisting of two flaps in the floor or door, that closed immediately when someone had passed through, giving the impression of moving through a solid surface. - http://www.theatrecrafts.com/pages/home/glossary-of-technical-theatre-terms/trap-doors-stage/


	17. Quelled

_one week earlier_

 

 _“Once there was a king,”_ Sylvie sang, _“who was alone.Who was bored of being alone. So he searched and searched and found -”_

She was interrupted by the peremptory _thwack_ of a cane against the wooden boards of the little music room. Lavoie the musical director shifted his impressive bulk, sighed gustily, his regal jowls wobbling, and said, “From the beginning. This time with a little _vivacity_ if you please.”

Sylvie, standing still with her hands clasped in front of her like a little girl giving a recital, nodded wearily and opened her mouth as the accompanist tinkled a few notes on the piano. This time she was louder but almost a quarter tone sharp. Everyone in the room, including the singer, winced.

Everyone, that is, but the older soprano ensconced regally in one of the side chairs, her vivid green skirts draped elegantly around her. “I am quite certain,” the Great de Garouville said in soft tones to her companion, “that the girl will do very well if she applies herself. Her new patron seems very fond of her. But of course she will rise to what is required of her. On the night.” Marguerite Sal nodded dumbly, a light scarf wrapped around her throat. In the centre of the room, just close enough to hear the encouragement, Sylvie declined to answer but began the aria from the beginning, on-pitch and precisely on the beat, as perfect and as boring as a mechanical nightingale.

“That will do,” Lavoie said at last, “for today.” He pinched the top of his high-bridged nose. “We will rehearse Alidoro, the tutor disguised as a beggar, in ten minutes. Mlle Baudin, I trust you will rest appropriately tonight and bring yourself in good form to the morning’s rehearsal, eight o’clock sharp.” Approximately as lofty as a king, or a pope, the music director yet deigned to walk the young singer to the door.

Wearily, Sylvie asked him, in the corridor outside, “Could we perhaps reschedule, Maestro?”

“Young miss,” he cautioned her softly, “you have a leading part. Congratulations. But you are not yet a prima donna, and you do not have the, the _leeway_ to dictate rehearsal times, or to have the headache or the vapours, or to grant yourself unexplained holidays. Not when we are rehearsing.”

“I didn’t -”

He patted her kindly on the shoulder. “Courage, young miss. Lesser than you have climbed. But you must apply yourself.” He turned again, regal in a grand blue coat buttoned with gold, and marched again into his music room, preparing to do righteous battle with a hungover bass.

After the door was shut, Sylvie lifted her chin and braced her shoulders, and looked both ways. Empty, for the moment. Lonely.

“Are you there, Ghost?”

“Sylvie?”

 

**

 

“Tell me again why I lied to the nice policeman,” Aramis said, soft and sharp, smiling with his lips as he paced up one branch of the Grand Staircase. The lovely, ornamented hall echoed back footsteps. 

“Perhaps you trusted me?” breathed Porthos. “Are you having buyer’s remorse?”

“No, I -” Aramis shook his head sharply, then paused as a flock of dancers, escorted by two very young police cadets, fluttered by. Aramis lifted his hat to them, then continued, soft as a sigh. “That a suspect should be removed from consideration because, ‘he’s a much neater strangler,’ that is a very slender straw to lay across a chasm. I am wary of testing my weight upon it. Perhaps if you finished your story, _dārugheh.”_ Porthos’ lips pursed.

They reached the highest level of the hall, a mezzanine lined with potted plants on dainty tables, interspersed with tall and thin ornamental mirrors. Aramis stopped at one and examined his reflection in the mirror. He flicked a fallen strand of hair from his forehead and extended his arms rapidly to leave a crisp quarter-inch of shirt cuff protruding from his dark coat sleeves. Standing still and grave he watched the mirror a moment longer.

“You preen like a woman.”

They turned to the journalist who addressed them, his limp-straw hair held neatly with pomade and his striped shirt-sleeves rolled up around his wiry forearms.

“You walk like one,” Porthos said, smiling. _Or at least_ , he thought to himself, _soft like one._ But he was ignored by the Frenchman.

“What are you doing here?” Rochefort asked Aramis.

“M. Rochefort, is it not?” Aramis asked.

“Surely you must realise that it isn’t safe for the young ladies for men to wander around here at random."

“Well, only if the men in question are _murderers,”_ Aramis said logically. “If we could sequester those of ill-intent away, the rest of us could gambol around, _tra la la, tra la la.”_

Rochefort’s eyes flashed. “You would joke of such a thing?”

“I laugh at everything: I’m hopelessly light-minded.”

“I already heard him giggle about a shipwreck,” Porthos contributed.

“We were _in the harbour_ when it happened,” Aramis explained. “And I couldn’t get the salt out of my hair for weeks. The trials that afflict a man...”

“You think this is a time for humour?” Treville asked, as the Commissioner moved up beside them.

“That we may not cry,” Aramis said brightly. With his back to the mirror he looked out over the grandiose void of the foyer. “Lovely view,” he remarked vaguely.

Unlike Rochefort, Treville’s eyes, hard and old like weathered granite, did not skip over the Persian. Porthos smiled back at him peacefully. “I must ask the both of you your purpose in coming here.”

Aramis put his hand on his breast, as did Porthos, and said, honestly, “Only to visit a friend.”

Treville considered them both grimly. “I will find you an escort.”

“As it pleases,” said Aramis lightly.

“We can wait,” said Porthos, very amiable.

“Oh my _God,_ Treville,” said Louis Bourbon, coming up the steps himself. “Do you truly mean to accost an honoured guest such as the Comte d’Artagnan’s brother? It is the height of rudeness.”

“The gendarmerie takes attempted murder seriously,” Treville attempted.

“Oh, shoo,” M. Bourbon cut him off. “That a gentleman of such standing could be involved? Fie! Besides, the Chevalier d’Herblay was _on stage_ when it happened. He couldn’t possibly be the malefliction. You do the Opera House no favours by harassing its gentleman callers.”

M. Treville’s jaw tightened, but he let them all go.

“I feel angry on the Commissioner’s behalf,” Aramis commented as they trotted down the corridors looking for Music Room 3. “It is difficult to follow the hunt if they keep you in hobbles.” Porthos, ex-magistrate, nodded with great feeling. “Would the esteemed manager feel the same way if he knew my mother was an opera dancer, I wonder?”

“You were from Brittany, you said.”

“She moved out to the provinces when she became with child,” said Aramis. “Cheaper cost of living and… things.” His eyes sharpened as they spied Rochefort again, walking down a cross-corridor with an armful of photographic equipment. “I could perhaps tuck a press pass in my hat band as well. I’m sure that would smooth things over.” He stopped suddenly and began patting his coat dramatically. “I’m looking for a compass,” he whispered to Porthos. “With that and a map I might _just possibly_ find what I’m looking for here.”

“I thought you were putting on a show so you could look around some.”

“No. I’m genuinely lost.”

Porthos laughed, warm and rich, and pointed the way.

 

**

 

“Are you there, Ghost?”

Prostrate, Athos lay on his belly in a watching post over the corridor, one eye to the peephole. He had forgone the mask today and his shaggy hair fell about his face so that he shoved it back, irritably, as he watched the young woman below.

Sylvie stood alone, shoulders rigidly braced (it wouldn’t be good for her voice, cramping up like that) and her small chin lifted, ready to take on all comers. (She shouldn’t be alone, not with a murderer about. She shouldn’t be alone.) Athos’ hand flattened against the rough wood of the watching post; his fingers spread out like a fan.

“Sylvie?”

It was the young man again, the Frenchman, the exquisitely polished tailor’s mannequin who had intruded into Sylvie’s dressing room not long (an eternity) ago. And beside him was Porthos Nikbin, large as life but oddly quelled. Perhaps it was the dull, formal suit that he wore.

As Athos watched, Sylvie planted her feet and relaxed her shoulders. With exquisite control and excellent vocal clarity, she said, “I’m still not talking about… downstairs.”

“You don’t have to.” The tailor’s mannequin hesitated, then said something very soft in a rough provincial dialect, too low and fast for Athos to follow. Whatever it was, it shook the girl. She lifted a hand, ostensibly to tuck a tightly curled strand of hair behind her ear, but she moved it in front of her eyes quickly.

Athos watched the young man make three great strides towards her. His arms came up, paused, then clasped around her, and she softened into his shoulder: she wasn’t alone.

His hair was falling in his face again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _Once there was a king_ \- Sylvie is singing “Una volta c’era un ré” from La Cenerentola. There’s an audio version here: https://youtu.be/hlLFRa_x6WQ 
> 
> // I stole Lavoie-as-music master from Anathema Device’s lovely “Le Fantôme des Mousquetaires” because why not.
> 
> // _a mild-mannered fox in a foreign land_ \- There is apparently an Iranian proverb ‘Be a lion at home and a fox abroad.’ 
> 
> // _malefliction_ \- male(factor) + (af)fliction. Louis has a creative approach to language. It’ll catch on some day!


	18. Suddenly, Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: some violence, in this chapter.

“I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you.” 

The Comte d’Artagnan walked along the tree-lined boulevard a polite arms-length from Constance Bonacieux, who was cool and neat in a shirtwaist and dark skirt, holding a delicate parasol against the afternoon sun.

“Charles,” she said tiredly, “I’m not taking your money.”

“From a friend to a friend. For safer quarters. That’s a terrible neighbourhood you live in.”

“I live in a perfectly respectable boarding house, thank you, between Mlle de Larroque the dance mistress and a nice lady who sleeps with her snakes.”

D’Artagnan swallowed back a startled laugh.

 _“Respectable,”_ Constance repeated. “We look after ourselves there. We don’t need a man to do it.”

“I would _never_ take advantage of you. Never hurt you. There’s a murderer loose, isn’t that more important than the look of the thing?”

She stopped him with a gloved hand on his cheek. “There’s always a murderer loose. Or something like. There’s always something to scare us into hanging off a man.”

“It isn’t right.”

“No, it’s not, but that’s the way it is. Besides,” she added tartly, “there’s your reputation to consider. Never forgive myself if I ruined you for marriage, could I?” He drew in his breath sharply at that. She brushed his cheekbone with her thumb. “Joking, I’m joking.”

He covered her hand with his. “Can I buy you an ice, at least?”

“You may buy me an ice. With rosewater in it.”`

 

**

 

Aramis twirled a little silver fork in the little china dish of frozen noodles flavoured with rosewater and lime juice, tried a little, and nodded approvingly. As he took another mouthful Sylvie ruffled his hair affectionately, and he howled, dropping the spoon to protect his head.

“His mother was tiny,” she informed Porthos. “So was he, back then, the little squirrel.”

“Small, but perfectly formed,” he said with dignity to the Persian, who laughed at him. Aramis smiled a little. “You would have loved her Da. Old Hubert was a scholar if not a gentleman. He used to go around all the farmhouses tapping on the back door in his long coat and flat cap. Not asking for bread, oh no, he wanted _stories.”_

“He was writing a book.”

“He could play fiddle like birds come down from the trees, he knew all the tunes, and young Sylvie would play with him or sing, honey bubbling from the rock, she didn’t need an Angel -”

“- and we’d go out on the midsummer nights looking for korrigans.”

“What’s a korrigan?” Porthos asked, chin resting on his hand.

“It’s a little dwarf-fairy. Or a pretty lady who likes wells. We looked for both kinds -”

“- purely for informational purposes.”

Aramis coughed. “I got the better part of my learning from Sylvie’s Da. I mean, I could _read_ \- whenever there was a little money spare Maman would buy old books from the market stalls - but mathematics would have passed me by. It helped, when my father sent me off to the naval school in Brest.” He faltered, and Sylvie touched his hand. He turned his hand so their palms touched, a gesture so easy and intimate that Porthos looked away. “And they sent you off to a Conservatory after he died and it was grey.”

“I haven’t forgiven you for reading my diary,” she said, lifting her chin.

“I wouldn’t expect you to. But I’m still sorry.”

“He’d have hated it if I let the music die,” she said meditatively. “I knew he would so I worked. But it was years before I could love the music for its own sake again.” Her eyes veiled. Then she nodded to herself. “Yes.”

Aramis smiled at her.

“He’s buried out at Perros-Guirec,” she said. “I go there on every anniversary.” He nodded. “And your -”

Her friend shrugged. “Nobody wrote me when Maman died,” he said. “So I -” His eyes shuttered, looking at someone over her shoulder. “Charles!” he said brightly to his brother, “we were just talking about my illustrious naval career. I’ve been in three shipwrecks, you know.”

“One of them was in the harbour,” Porthos said gravely.

“I heard that story,” said d’Artagnan, laughing.

“Two-and-a-half if you count the _Nutmeg_ against the tally,” he added. “We anti-sank her.”

“That sounds like a story itself,” said Mme Bonacieux, glancing up at the sky where a clump of clouds were moving to block the sunny day.

“Ah, well you see -”

A scream shattered the air.

 

**

 

In a little alley between tree-lined boulevardes the woman, Anne to her friends and Mme Mauricia to her employers, fell to one knee, her dull brown skirt cushioning the impact on the red brick pavement. Her felt hat slid slowly down from her intricate hair, unanchored, as she swerved the long steel hatpin in her hand back and forth savagely. The shining length of steel was already bright with blood.

Of the heavy-set men that ringed her about, in coarse shirts and trousers and crumpled hats, one wiped his bleeding hand on a leather apron then held it up appeasingly. “Easy, Madame,” he said, in thickly accented French, as if she were a spooked horse to be soothed, “Easy now. Don’t fight and it will go easier.”

She swore back at him in German, rapid and exquisitely enunciated and quite filthy.

“Yep,” another man muttered, “that’s the one.” The small woman launched herself at him, fast as a slap, driving her hatpin into the meat of his thigh so that he sighed, fast and breathy as if she had punctured a balloon and sagged a little. She shoved past as he staggered and almost made it but one of his friends wrapped thick arms around her. Her breath was filled with the rich stomach-turning aroma of pork sausage, she couldn’t breathe - Anne stamped down hard with the solid heel of her shoe, missed, stamped again, this time hitting the charcutier’s instep through his boot and feeling him cringe. He swore himself and swung her around in a whirl, a meaty hand slapped her like a crack of thunder and, head ringing, she screamed, savage and desperate.

“Sorry,” he muttered in German, and clamped a greasy hand over her mouth. She bit the meat of his palm and let the strength drop out of her legs, falling out of the loop of his arms and shoving away, ripping herself from a sudden finger-tangled grip in her hair. Anne fell and her hand landed in a small puddle left from last night’s rain, she spread her fingers against the rough brick and streaks of vibrant mold growing in the cracks and pushed up again. She screamed again, shaking her head against the straggles of torn hair that blocked her sight.

Footsteps, pounding across the bricks of the alleyway, another pounding of flesh on flesh, of wood on flesh. Anne looked up, her own head pounding, and saw Constance and Sylvie from the Opera, and their male friends, fighting her attackers. As she staggered upright, Aramis d’Herblay sent a neat uppercut to the man in the leather apron and he fell back. Constance cracked him on the skull with the reversed handle of her parasol and he collapsed. The others fled, peeling out of the other end of the little alley. Anne ran after them and felt another arm catch her about the waist. She threw back her head and cracked him across the nose, feeling him flinch but he held tight. _“Wo ist mein Sohn?”_ she screamed and he released her.

Anne ran to where the alley mouth debouched onto a wider boulevard and saw a narrow black carriage pulling rapidly away, with the workmen who had attacked her hanging off it. She screamed again.

Just then, a bundle of figures tumbled away from the far side of the carriage, rolling across the street - it stopped and separated out into two figures. The journalist Rochefort, his lank straw-coloured hair disarranged and blood coming from a cut over his eyebrow cautiously lifted his head. In the circle of his opening arms a small boy stirred: Louis. “It’s all right,” Rochefort said to her, reassuringly, “I’ve got him.” Anne ran to the pair and pulled her son away, gathering him tightly in her arms and backing against the wall of a hat-shop, holding up her free hand in warning.

“I saw them following you,” the journalist said in an undertone, as he found his straw boater and brushed street muck off his jacket. “I should have raised an alarm earlier, I’m so sorry. Are you uninjured, Madame?”

Anne glanced at him gratefully, then smoothed her son’s hair, a reason to touch him, to trace her hand over the curve of the skull. Louis nestled into her breathing easily, not particularly disturbed - he’d always been a sanguine child.

Slowly moving up around her, Constance and Sylvie put their hands on her, very gently, and nudged Anne to an outside chair in a nearby cafe.

 _“We were just going to get an ice,”_ Anne blurted, then said it again in French.

“Shh,” said Constance, smoothing her hair as she held her son and rocked, “shh, shh. We’ll take you home.” The young Comte d’Artagnan was already hailing a tall black hansom cab from the street. “Where do you keep your rooms, sweetheart?”

“The Opera House,” Anne said. Then, “I feel safe there.”

“We’re just calling the gendarmes now.”

“No!” Anne said rapidly, holding her son tighter. “No, you shouldn’t bother them with an insignificant street ruckus. No. I’m just going to -” she stopped and swallowed back bile. Louis snuggled into her, looking worried. The summer sunlight darkened, as a cloud passed in front of the sun.

M. Rochefort wormed between Constance and Anne and helped her to the hansom. He squeezed her hand as he handed her up and she looked at him gratefully. Rochefort almost stepped into the cab himself, but Constance walked briskly around to the other side and took up the remaining seat with square-jawed determination, her sturdy parasol gripped in both hands. His blue eyes sparked with a brief flash of rage then resumed their expression of concern and worry as the Comte d’Artagnan swung up on the high sprung seat beside the driver and the hansom pulled away. He turned to see Aramis and Sylvie and Porthos coming from the little alley. “I do see you in the oddest places,” he informed Aramis.

The Chevalier d’Herblay flashed a quick smile, his own hair disarranged and his nose swollen and bloody, with a woman’s crumpled felt hat in one hand and a handkerchief in the other. He tucked the handkerchief - adorned with both mud and extravagant embroidery in one corner - into a pocket of his waistcoat. He rubbed the bruised knuckles of one hand idly. “Once again, the pleasure of your acquaintance.”

Rain started to fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _frozen noodles, flavoured with rosewater and lime juice_ \- https://www.aashpazi.com/faloodeh - sounds tasty. Don’t know if it was served in Paris in the 1890s but given the city’s cosmopolitanism I’m not ruling it out.
> 
> // Korrigans - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korrigan 
> 
> // I flat out stole the anti-sunk _Nutmeg of Consolation_ ship from the _Master and Commander_ books by Patrick O’Brian.


	19. Truth or Consequences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // I’m just going to apologise in advance for the fuzziness of police ranks. It’s complicated, my source was short on details for the 19th century, and I’m fudging.

**Transcripts from police records, 15th September, taken by Public Security Officer Jules Corbusier.**

_S. Baudin: ... No, I’m sorry, I didn’t see anything at all. I was simply having a small refreshment at The Wren with some friends when we heard the scream. Of course they ran off to help - they’re good people. But I didn’t see anything, on account of hanging back. I’m afraid of violence. I’m very delicate, you see._

_Oh, the splinters in my hand? A chair broke and I tripped on it. I’m most distressed with the shoddy workmanship at The Wren and I may not eat there again. I wish I could help you, officer, but I truly did not see anything..._

*

_P. Nikbin: ... Excuse please. No French, very sorry. Thank you. Excuse thank you…_

*

_A. R. d’Herblay: ... I’d never seen that woman before in my life. She was Greek, I think. Had a mole on her cheek, very distinctive._

_Of course I could remember her face if I saw it again, I’m not an animal._

_It was all a bit of a scrum. I’m afraid I’ve no composure at all when fists go flying. I did land a blow on one of those utter bounders, I must have because my knuckles are sore. I tried to help him up but he tripped. And fell back a little, knocking his head against the bricks; the noise made me wince so hard that I lost my grip on his jacket and he fell to the ground. I’m sorry, I wish I could be sorrier but he did assault a defenseless woman from Greece._

_No, no, my good Persian friend did not participate in the fight at all. He’s a very gentle man. He stood to the side and remonstrated most eloquently with the reprobates, it brought tears to my eyes. Also, there was my battered nose, that brought tears to my eyes too. Could I see a doctor soon? I’m feeling very faint. Why are you asking about my brother the Comte? He wasn’t there, we’d planned to meet later in town…_

  
**

  
Commissioner Treville ruffled again through the typed transcripts of the interviews, the thin yellow papers fragile against his thumb. In the dim light of the pokey little room that had been set aside for his use in the Opera House he stared with disfavor at the solidly built man in a muddy coat who sat before him.

“‘Excuse please, no French’,” he quoted grimly.

Porthos Nikbin’s eyes twinkled, and a small dimple showed in one cheek. “I was just keeping your men on their toes,” he said peacefully. “I wanted to see if they had a translator on staff.”

“We have a consultant, but she is struggling with a bout of the ague.”

“Oh, my sympathies.”

The silence stretched out.

“My department received a wire this morning, from Governor Tariq Alamein, confirming your diplomatic credentials.”

A flicker of surprise in the Persian’s eyes - and why was that? - before M. Nikbin settled back in his chair keeping his smile just short of a grin. “I’m more of a tourist,” the man explained, “the diplomacy stuff is a courtesy title more than anything. I like music, me.”

 _“Why are you here?”_ gritted Treville.

M. Nikbin blinked at him. “Not to commit crime,” he said. “A woman was attacked: we ran to defend her. I may have slung a few bodies around in the fray, but it’s not like I started that fight. No, I cannot identify the woman - Occidentals all look alike to me.”

“About the man who died -”

The door to Treville’s ‘office’ slammed open, making the flame in his gaslamp flicker. In the corner, a mop and bucket wobbled dangerously. The lead dancer of the Opera House, Constance Bonacieux, stormed in, her hair flaming even in the close air of the little room. “About the dead man,” she said, “the one that died after the fight. I was there; I was the one who hit him. With my parasol.” The cadet following on her skirt train snickered. She glared at young Brujon. “There’s lead inside the handle.” Turning back to Treville, she snapped, “And bad cess to him, too, laying hands on a woman like that. I didn’t mean to kill him but I’m not sorry he died of his wounds, either.”

“Constance,” came soothing words behind her, as Aramis d’Herblay walked in. He’d dressed himself elegantly as ever, but his nose was red and swollen and he held his hands high, cradling the right where it had a handkerchief soaked in cold water wrapped about the knuckles. “It is very gracious of you to intervene in this matter, Madame, but you _weren’t even there_ and I can take my lumps. You’ll no doubt have noticed a deeper bruise on the man’s jaw, M. Treville: that was from my signet ring. Any… _consequences..._ of killing a _violent criminal_ in a confusing melee should redound to me. And you,” he snapped, to an unknown outside the little room, “just stay the hell out of it.”

“I’m not abandoning my older brother,” said the Comte d’Artagnan, grimly shouldering his way in. “Or Constance.”

Constance and Aramis both drew in furious breaths.

“Nah,” said Porthos Nikbin lazily, “that must have been one of the men I was flinging about. Don’t know my own strength…”

“About the dead man,” Treville continued, consulting his notes, “who was killed by a booted foot crushing his trachea as he lay supine on the ground…”

All in the room looked at each other, then at Treville. “Eh?” they chorussed.

The mop in the corner, standing precariously in the bucket, lost its hold on verticality and clattered on the floorboards.

“Would anyone care to expand on their statement?” he asked dryly. They blinked at him.

 

**

 

In a little room high under the eaves a clockwork silver scorpion skittered slowly across scrubbed floorboards. An exploratory black paw batted at it, then batted at it again, sending it skidding across the room as two little black cats stalked and hunted it, tails high and faces intent. Watching them from where he sat cross-legged on the floor, Louis chortled.

A neatly made bed was set to one side, though the low and slanting ceiling made it difficult to sit upright on it except at the very edge. Sylvie, finely built as she was, kept her perch, and worked her comb through the tangled draggles of hair about Anne’s shoulders as the other woman sat huddled and silent on a rickety chair. The comb snagged briefly, pulling at Anne’s sore scalp and she winced, stifling the sound in her throat. Sylvie pulled the comb away, and switched to a cloth from a basin of warm water, shushing and gentling.

“I’ve gotten too comfortable here,” Anne said suddenly. “Too fat and lazy. I should have moved on last year.”

“Who are you running from?” Sylvie asked, low and soft, as she gently sponged away mud from Anne’s hair.

Anne laughed, cracked and brittle. “Would you believe, family?”

“I could believe that,” the younger woman answered. At her feet, one of the black cats slithered by, still pursuing the delicate little toy.

“I’ve done nothing to be reproached for,” Anne said fiercely. “Nothing but loving, and wanting to raise my son in peace.”

“Alright,” said Sylvie slowly. She picked up the comb again and worked it through the damp strands. “Would - the person you shop for - would he help you?”

“He won’t talk to me. Not since the maid was strangled.” Anne’s hands wrung each other in her lap, then long-ingrained deportment lessons straightened her spine and she said, remote and beautiful as a single pearl, “I do not require anyone’s assistance to live my life as I choose.” Suddenly, the toy scorpion's hooked and arched tail whipped forward, and the cats scrambled back. One hid under the bed behind Sylvie's ankles; the other circled around the toy, eyes intent.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, at least, before you go haring off. Constance should be back soon.”

“Talking to the police…” Anne said, far away as the moon.


	20. In the Shadows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of emotional stuff going on in this chapter, some of which is pretty manipulative. Just so you... don't get any unpleasant surprises.

Constance sat easily on the corridor floor, back against the wall and her legs stretched out. Rolling her neck, then her ankles, she listened again to the murmur of voices in Treville’s ‘office’: too low to decipher.

She elbowed d’Artagnan in his bandy, beautifully trousered leg. “Here, what’s up with you and Aramis?”

“Nothing’s up,” he said uncomfortably.

She poked him again.

“Ow,” he said. “That’s a bruise.”

“Sorry,” she said, rampantly unapologetic. 

D’Artagnan drummed long, nervous fingers on his thigh. “They’ve been talking a long time… Here, this Persian gentleman… who is he?”

“Everybody knows Porthos,” she said, shutting her eyes and tipping her head back against the wall. “Three things dancers live on: grapefruit, hard work, and gossip.” She wrinkled her brow and added, “Make that five things, because I could quite seriously murder for coffee and a smoke.”

“I will buy you coffee when we’re done.”

She smiled up at him. “So anyway, Porthos likes music, he likes stories, he doesn’t pass on any of the - you know, the _damaging_ stuff - everybody knows Porthos.”

“Is he a good man?” She shrugged. “I’m just asking,” said d’Artagnan defensively. “And this Sylvie, she’s nice?”

“Very.” Her eyes blinked slowly then she looked up at him again. Softly: “You don’t know your brother’s childhood sweetheart…?” All she could see was his elegant jaw as he looked to the side. Constance elbowed him again.

“Ow.” D’Artagnan drummed his fingers on his thigh and she caught his hand. 

“I never had a brother,” he said, looking at the blank wall on the other side of the hall. “Not until six months ago when I was going through some papers after my parents died: old payments through the steward, some school fees from the Naval College in Brest, a draft for a recommendation. Then I dug around a bit and found the letters.” He swallowed. “It turns out that Papa had an affair when he was young and Mother found out and made him stop and then… I wanted a brother so badly when I was a kid and it turns out he was there all along, standing in the shadows. God knows what he thought of me, because I don’t.

“So I wrote and he came for a visit when his ship made land at Marseilles and we’ve been going around Paris and he’s so very sweet, Constance, and so very difficult to talk to.” D’Artagnan’s fingers tightened in hers. “I’m trying to _do_ and it never quite seems… enough.”

The office door opened suddenly and Aramis backed out of it, his hand on his heart. “... have my word, Captain, O my Captain, that if I see anything that seems appropriate to pass onto you, _I shall do so.”_ He turned and grinned. “Charles! And the lovely Constance, you waited for us.” _Sotto voce_ he added, “I’m off to return some lost property.” His hand lifted, dropped, then lifted again and patted d’Artagnan lightly on the shoulder. “Coming, brother? Constance?” 

He turned without waiting for an answer and paced quickly down the hall, and d’Artagnan trotted after him. Porthos stood in the doorway, watching them. Then he glanced at Constance, put one hand behind his ear, then nodded to the wall. He shrugged, palms upwards. “Fuck,” said Constance. Porthos offered her a hand up.

 

**

 

In the high little room Anne sat straight and still as a queen as Sylvie sponged the mud from her hair.

“Constance should be back soon,” Sylvie said comfortably.

“Talking to the police…” Anne replied.

“It’s not in her to betray you,” Sylvie said.

Anne twitched. “That’s not the point,” she said. “Entirely,” she added, to be fair. “I’ve brought trouble: it’s best I go.”

Sylvie chuckled ruefully. “You and Athos are so much alike.”

Anne turned to look at her, startled. “I’m not that bad, surely?”

“You both prefer to hide in the shadows; you worry about your friends.”

A brief, chilly smile touched Anne’s lips. “Can I really count Constance a friend if she knows so little about me? She likes a carefully painted mask, a construction of a woman - affable enough, but designed not to take up too much attention. It isn’t fair on her. Especially not when the monsters come out.”

On the floorboards of the little room, the black cat batted at the silver scorpion and looked at Anne’s son reproachfully. Louis picked up the toy and wound the key hidden in its segmented belly. True to its nature, when he set it on the floor it began to scuttle and circle over the rough boards, its arched tail held back poised and taut, ready to strike. Another smile touched Anne’s lips, warmer this time. Sylvie felt a brush of fur as the other cat slipped from her hidden place under the bed and sat watching, half-hidden by her ankles.

“Louis’ father used to chatter like a tree full of birds,” Anne commented, as Sylvie worked the comb again through the tangles in her hair. This close, the girl could see darkness showing through at the roots where the dye had started to grow out. “He was a very charming man. Gallant. And he was _kind.”_ Her hands worked in her lap, and she did not look up at the quiet scratching at the door. 

“What happened?” Sylvie asked, bringing the comb up to the woman’s scalp and feeling her relax under its pull.

“He… was not approved of by my parents. His background. His ethics. And when he was picked up by the authorities in a civil protest it was made clear to them that he was to be written down as the ringleader, and the perpetrator of a few other things that they did not like, and…”

Anne drew breath, slow and ragged. “The man that they painted him as died hard, and hated. If someone I cared for had not loved me, he would not have been such a target and his legacy destroyed.

“And knowing that, I go on.” She looked up, to where Constance, and Aramis, and Porthos, and d’Artagnan were sitting on the floor, their feet tucked up like children listening to a storyteller. As she watched, Louis pulled himself comfortably onto Aramis’ lap and tucked his curly head under the young man’s chin. One of the cats collapsed sideways against Porthos’ wide thigh and started to purr as he rubbed behind her ears.

Constance got up on one knee and took Anne’s hand, mindful of the grazes.

“You don’t have to go on alone,” she said.

 

**

 

When she could not stand it anymore, Marguerite Sal stole away from her mistress’s dressing room, and her mistress’s rages, and walked in the quiet and the dark of the evening auditorium. The seats were covered, muffled with cloth, and stretched out into the shadows of the auditorium, its plaster wreaths and giltwork hidden also. The great chandelier hung silent and still, freshly cleaned but unlighted, louring overhead.

On the stage the flats and furniture of the half-built _Cenerentola_ set outlined a grand house, decayed in splendour, and at the heart of it a kitchen, and a hearth, the red cloth that would billow into fake flame inside it lying still.

“It is a story we tell ourselves,” Rochefort said, coming out from a shadowed nook and stepping up behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders, curving his fingers very gently over the cloth and the fragile bone. “If we who live in the shadows labour dutifully and well, if we are pure of heart, _someday_ someone beautiful will notice us and take us away from the dirt, and the toil, and put us in a place of honour.

“A good marriage, the respect of our peers, maybe Heaven… these stories warm us at night. They give us hope. But I forget,” he said, his hands tightening, “you are not pure of heart.”

Though his fingers would leave bruises, she sighed and relaxed into his hold. “It’s alright,” he told her kindly. “I still love you.”

He wrapped his arms around her.


	21. At Saint Lazarus Station

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // I’m sorry. This is a hot mess of a chapter, and it’s very late, and I’m sorry.

Named after the street on which it was sited, and that street after an ancient leper house, the Gare Saint-Lazare was a bustling station and confluence of iron roads and the travellers thereon. Through the high arch of the front gate and under the clock counting down time a tall blonde woman, her hair braided like a crown under a drab hat and veil, hurried along, striding through the crowds and tugging a coat-muffled child by the hand.

She swerved around a cluster of women dressed in the height of fashion and past two young students from Persia talking earnestly to a large gentleman from the same country, swinging past a group of workmen repairing some cracked flagstones, and a beggar slumped against a pillar, his slouch hat pulled down and his scarf tugged up, a small tin of pencils held in a bandaged hand. The skirt of the woman’s coat knocked the eisel of a dark-haired painter and he looked up, his round spectacles glinting in the brilliant light coming from above and his mouth pursed in annoyance. She did not apologise or even look back, disappearing with her child into a cloud of white steam.

By a high stack of trunks nearby Aramis looked vaguely around the station, buttoned into an exquisite suit, shoes shined and hair smoothly combed and set with pomade. One white hand fluttered helplessly. He loosed the button of his jacket in the heat of the sunny day, revealing a waistcoat adorned with a thousand spring flowers, and startled into a smile as a trio of young ladies walked past, faces hidden by the veils of their hats, but their heads turning. Beside him, at his shoulder but with his back turned, his younger brother grinned at a couple of children standing together holding hands, far away across the echoing gulf, the rough ground, the iron tracks. “Seen anything?” d’Artagnan muttered through the side of his mouth.

“A possible smuggling ring, some young people planning on ducking their train-tickets, and three offers to, um, model. For art.”

“Behave, Aramis,” said d’Artagnan.

“I can’t help being beautiful, Charles. Hm. A group of either anarchists, people interested in social reform, or excited students.”

“The workmen,” said d’Artagnan, low and intense.

“It seems a little… obvious.” He felt the boy deflate behind him. “Trust your instincts; sometimes people do the obvious. And you’ve a good eye, I’ve noticed.”

“I could have sent her out to the country house,” d’Artagnan groused.

Aramis choked.

“As a housekeeper, or, or, something. What’s the point of having money if I can’t help people with it?”

“You’re helping now,” Aramis said gently. “Sometimes providing assistance requires a touch of delicacy, instead of charging straight ahead. Madame la Concierge appreciates the intent behind your words, I know, but I think also she craves independence as a wild thing craves it.”

“You always know what to say,” answered d’Artagnan.

“I really don’t.”

A small troop of gendarmes in duck-bill kepis and short capes scurried along the line and Aramis blinked at them with interest. The blonde woman and her child were nowhere to be seen.

A few metres away, one of the three veiled ladies muttered, testily, “Oh, go away, you’re not helping.”

“Patience, Constance,” one of her companions chided.

“Who’s going to chase our rabbit if the dogs are in view?” the dancer asked.

“But there are so many guilty consciences showing,” Sylvie answered. “It’s beautiful. Look at how those workmen twitch.”

“That might be anything,” said Constance dourly. Sylvie shrugged.

From the direction of the ticket office the blonde woman and her child darted forward like a flung stone, casting ripples in an already chaotic pond. The workmen at their cracked stones looked up like dogs catching a scent and then followed her at a controlled, deliberate pace, half of them peeling off to keep the gendarmes away, the others, long-legged, determinedly catching up.

“Delicacy!” they heard Aramis cry, as the young Comte d’Artagnan shot after them.

 

**

 

On the night train to Brittany Aramis, restlessly shuffling a deck of cards with nimble fingers, said to the stranger on the other side of the carriage, “Well, after that there was a bit of a kerfuffle.” He fell into a musing silence, looking at the glass, and his reflection on the glass, and the sleeping landscape behind it.

“And?” asked the stranger.

Aramis tucked his smile away and said, soberly, “And then there was some shouting.”

 

**

 

The blonde woman and her child backed slowly into the little side corridor of the station as one of the workmen edged towards them, rough hands in the air, murmuring soothingly.

“I’m sorry,” she said from behind her hat-veil, “but I really don’t have the faintest clue what you’re saying.” She looked down at the child. “Do you, Felicité?”

The child shrugged. “German was never my strongest,” she said gruffly. “The dialect’s a bit thick.”

The workman’s leathery face creased and shifted, his faded blue eyes widened as he realised that he had been tricked. “You’re not Her -” he said, shifting to accented French. “This is all… I’m sorry.” Then he lifted his hands higher as a revolver appeared in the ‘child’s’ hand, pointed at his midsection.

“Yes, I’m sorry too,” said the ‘child’ gruffly. “Trompe l’oeil was never my line. But there it is.”

Ninon de Larroque, the Opera’s dance mistress, unpinned the drab, veiled hat from her high-braided hair. Her fair eyebrows wrinkled, then she threw it onto the track of an approaching train, to be destroying by the whistling, steaming locomotive. The ‘child’ beside her tugged off a wild russet wig to show a smooth, dark coiffure of pinned and braided hair. The revolver, small and neat, did not move in the dwarf woman’s hand.

The man sagged wearily. “Just tell me that she’s safe.”

Behind him, in the great void of the train station, police whistles sounded as the gendarmes rounded up the last of the men. “What are you?” Ninon asked curiously. “Anarchists? Revolutionaries?”

“I’m Friedrich Brandt, and I’m a Loyalist,” the man answered, very tired.

“I’m _not.”_ It was a furious hiss, and he turned to see three veiled ladies in the entrance to the side passage. They lifted their veils to reveal dull little Mme Mauricia, colour high in her pale cheeks, flanked by Constance and Sylvie. “I’m not a Loyalist, I’m not a Reformer, I’m not _anything_ but an exile, looking to raise my son in peace.”

“But the bloodline, Your Grace -”

 _“Fuck_ the bloodline,” Anne said. “You don’t get your hands on my son; you don’t use him as a banner; you don’t let him be ripped apart in your games. _I left that place.”_

Coming up behind them with Porthos’ mighty arm slung over his shoulder, Aramis breathed, “Oh…”

“Oh,” the Persian echoed, soft and sad.

“We know that,” snapped Friedrich. “We were trying to keep you safe, just, undisturbed-like as a lady would have it, but then he told us you were in trouble, that someone was… pressuring you. We thought we had to act. Get you off the street and out of trouble.” His eyes flicked to the dark bruise high on her cheekbone, not quite hidden by maquillage, and his mouth drooped. “And everything went wrong and people lost their heads and I’m _sorry.”_

“Who told you Anne was in trouble?” Aramis asked curiously.

Friedrich frowned. “He kept a scarf up around his face.” He gestured, as if to pull down a hat brim. “My brother Franz knew him, but he was killed that day. And Anton.” His gaze shifted to the gendarmes coming up in their short capes. To Mme Mauricia, he mouthed, _I won’t tell,_ and kept his arms loose and pliable as they took him away.

 

**

 

“That all sounds very neat,” said the quiet traveller.

“Not quite _Pirates of Penzance_ or _The Contrabandista,”_ Aramis said soberly. “We still didn’t know who killed Franz, you see.”

“And what happened to your Persian friend?”

“Oh, Porthos hurt his ribs, all very disagreeable.” Aramis’ cheeks warmed. “I took care of that later.”

 

**

 

“Thanks again for your help, Madame Ninon,” said Constance, her eyes and cheeks bright. “And you also, Mam’zelle Rose.”

The dance mistress inclined her head.

“It was no trouble,” the dwarf painter Felicité Rose said in a low, gruff voice. She frowned down at her legs, covered in a child’s britches, “except for the short pants. I like trousers better.”

“I’m sorry,” said Constance. “I’ll find a way to make it up to you.”

“You shall sit for me,” she said regally, “I’m branching into human anatomy. And you,” she added, looking up at Sylvie. “You have good bones, young miss.”

“I’m not taking my clothes off,” Sylvie warned.

Mam’zelle Rose waved one hand. “In plain air, then, a nice candid view.” Sylvie frowned, but looked considering. “My card,” the little painter said, putting it in the young woman’s hand, then, to Ninon, “Shall we, cousin?”

“I’ve a pound of good new tea at home,” the dance mistress answered, and the pair walked off, arm in arm.

“I think that ended… well,” said Aramis, brightly, to the big man leaning awkwardly on his shoulder.

“The trouble being,” Porthos said, breathless, “that it hasn’t… _ended.”_

In the wider part of the station, the echoing vault that could hold multitudes, Aramis’ brother knelt by one of the squared pillars that held the high roof. He hovered over the recumbent form of one of the German workmen, the man’s booted foot still twitching from his recent death. D’Artagnan looked up at them, frowning, his coffee-dark eyes worried, and twitched open the man’s striped shirt collar to show a livid red line of indents circling his swollen throat, marks left by a chain that made up a necklace he could never remove.

“Want to bet that man was called Anton?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // My history of the station is severely condensed, but not without basis. Some better links follow. (The leprosarium was shut down in the 17th century.) Several painters of the Impressionist school liked painting it.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_Saint-Lazare 
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_Saint-Lazare#Gare_Saint-Lazare_in_art_and_literature 
> 
> // Mlle Felicité Rose is an awkward mash-up of the painters Henri de Toulouse Lautrec and Rosa Bonheur and I wouldn’t put any weight on her characterisation. But Bonheur did go around in trousers (she had special permission from the police) so she could walk through horse fairs and stockyards without attracting attention. Female painters of that century were either officially barred or just discouraged from life-drawing classes and wandering around rough areas at will for fear their morals would be affected - it put a crimp on the subjects they could paint. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/19wa/hd_19wa.htm 
> 
> // You're probably already familiar with _The Pirates of Penzance._ _The Contrabandista_ is an earlier work by Arthur Sullivan (and F. C. Burnand) that similarly ends with a band of merry criminals being pardoned.


	22. Crack

“I think m’ribs are just bruised, not cracked,” said Porthos Nikbin, as his friend eased him up the stairs, one of Porthos’ arms slung over his narrower shoulders.

“It doesn’t hurt to make sure,” Aramis said placidly, hovering in the hall, unswayed by Porthos’ weight.

Porthos scratched lightly on the door and it wasn’t long before his man Florian swung the door open and let them into rooms papered with a fussy, grey-yellow-green print. Florian’s single eye widened and Porthos genially allowed him and Aramis to steer him to a stiffly held perch on a four-legged stool in the middle of his sitting room. The servant quickly disappeared with a scribbled note from Aramis and they were alone.

“Are you sure this isn’t just an excuse to get my kit off?” Porthos asked, smiling. It was Paris: such things could be said.

Crouching in front of Porthos, his deft fingers on the coat buttons, Aramis answered, “I never flirt with people I’m patching up.” His eyes flicked up, then dropped to the brass buttons, and a smile curled the corner of his mouth. “Unless they want me to,” he amended.

“Hm,” answered Porthos, and then not much at all as the heavy coat was eased off his shoulders and he sat stiffly against the pain.

“Remember to breathe,” Aramis advised, hanging the garment on the bend of an elderly coat-rack.

“Working on that,” Porthos said tensely. He unknotted his tie and worked his shirt-collar open and then stopped, shutting his eyes against a sudden muscle spasm. Aramis didn’t try to talk him through it, just quietly opened the horn buttons of his darkly-flowered waistcoat, the mother-of-pearl of his shirt.

“Ready?” Aramis asked, when Porthos’ eyes opened. A brief nod, and the Frenchman eased Porthos’ clothing over his shoulders. Impersonal and light as his hands were, Porthos’ skin prickled.

“Maybe I want you to,” he said, after another careful breath. His shirt draped awkwardly behind him, caught still at the wrists.

“Take your kit off?” Aramis offered his hand and, given Porthos’ wrist, cradled it and worked at the dainty cuff-buttons.

“Flirt,” said Porthos, mouth dry.

Aramis said nothing, but when the stiff cuff sprang open his thumb brushed across Porthos’ inner wrist and the bigger man drew in his breath sharply, then flinched as that set off another muscle spasm.

“Oh dear,” Aramis said contritely, “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“You talk a lot, I’ve noticed that.”

Aramis grinned as slanting sunlight from the gauze-curtained windows touched his face with highlights and shadow. He freed Porthos’ other wrist then circled around and, in lieu of making him lift his arms to take off his knitted undershirt, nicked the hem with a silver penknife and matter-of-factly ripped the brief garment down the back and tugged it off him. “I’ll mend it for you,” he promised.

“It’s fine.”

The door opened and the servant returned with a stack of wide linen bandages and a brown glass bottle of laudanum with the logo of a nearby apothecary. “Ah, Florian,” Aramis said cheerfully, “thank you for that. If it’s not too much trouble, a bit of chipped ice?”

The somber servant nodded, his lined face expressionless.

“After that, you can take the afternoon off,” Porthos suggested.

Florian disappeared into the tiny kitchen and, as they heard him chipping and cracking at a block of ice with a pick, Aramis crouched again by Porthos’ side, his eyes crinkling as he eyed the bruises mottling his torso, blue-red-black against his skin.

The servant came back with a cold compress of ice wrapped in a clean dishcloth. “Mail,” the one-eyed man said, removing a letter from his inner coat pocket. Tariq’s strong elegant calligraphy addressed it and Porthos took it, cracked the seal with his thumb, then shook his head slightly and stowed it unopened in his trouser pocket. He knew what it would say.

“That will be all,” he told Florian, then flinched as Aramis applied the compress to his side.

“Breathe.”

The ice was helping, a little, fierce in its own right it numbed and soothed the pain. Porthos sucked in air carefully and declined the offer of a draft of laudanum. “I like to keep my head.”

“Hm.” Aramis took the compress away after a time and ran fine callused hands over Porthos’ ribs. His black eyes were distant; his face serene as one of his people’s saints; his hands very gentle as they skimmed over rib and muscle and palpated, with exquisite delicacy, the tender areas. “I think you’re right - bruised, not broken - but I’ll wrap you tight anyway. Deep breaths as often as you can,” he ordered, “for your lungs’ sake.” The Frenchman stood and wound the bandage Florian had brought around Porthos’ torso tight enough that it creaked, checking the big man had his full ration of air when he breathed.

Crouching lightly between Porthos’ spread knees, Aramis tucked the loose end of the bandage under and pinned it for security. “Are we?” he asked, glancing up, eyes innocent.

“Talking?”

“Flirting.”

In answer, Porthos reached to the man’s neck and tugged the loose end of his dark necktie until the bow fell open, the ends of it silk-whispering as they loosened and draped. He worked the stud of the stiff collar open with a pop, and the highest button of the starched shirt, to reveal the man’s throat. “I’m injured,” he informed Aramis, curling his hand around his neck so that his thumb caressed the hinge of his jaw. “Be gentle.”

The saintly mask cracked: Aramis’ eyes smiled. “Remember to breathe,” he said.

 

**

 

Somehow, as the young Comte d’Artagnan walked the dancer home through Montmartre, it became quite natural for him to hold her hand. Constance interlaced her fingers with his and they moved at an easy pace through the late afternoon crowds. At a street corner he turned his head to point out the juggler tossing silk scarves and realised with surprise that they were seeing eye to eye. He blinked, and realised that Constance was standing _en pointe_ , beautifully balanced even in street shoes. The warm light of the low sun brought out the fire in her hair and tinted her skin amber: nothing was more beautiful than her sudden grin.

Constance dropped to the ground. “I can’t do that too much. It’s horrible on my shoes,” she explained.

“I forgot to ask,” said d’Artagnan, “was Anne’s son looked after today?”

“Oh,” said Constance blithely, “she said that she found some sitters.” She nodded across the street to a plain green door in a neat two-storied building. “I’m home,” she said.

“You are.”

“Thank you for walking me.”

“You’re welcome.” D’Artagnan’s fingers tightened on hers, then loosened. She didn’t pull away.

“I can’t invite you up,” she said. “It’s a respectable boarding house that doesn’t take gentleman callers.”

“No, no, of course not,” answered d’Artagnan earnestly.

“I should probably get some rest…”

“It’s been a busy day…”

The moment stretched out like pulled taffy, warm and sweet.

“Right then,” Constance said, squaring her shoulders. She let go his hand and marched across the street, finding her latchkey. In the doorway she turned and said, “We can go out to the Grand Jetty tomorrow afternoon, if you like.”

“Yes!”

The door shut, then opened a crack. “But I’m buying my own ices,” she said through it. The young Comte bowed gracefully. Head bowed, he heard her laugh.

 

**

 

Under the artistic hulk of the Opera House there is a dark lake, a reservoir to keep the foundations stable. There are not, to anyone’s knowledge, dragons sleeping under it, and the waters lie quiet and still.

On the edge of the lake a young woman in neat street dress walked with a tin hurricane lantern, the wick burning merrily behind its shield of glass and wire. She set it down by a low stack of cracked bricks left behind by the builders and, primly smoothing her skirts, sat down and opened a scuffed and battered case to reveal an ancient, sweet-voiced violin.

“I can practice anywhere I want,” Sylvie told the silence and the dark. She set her father’s fiddle to her chin and pulled a low note from it, then an arpeggio.

As she worked through the practical exercises that put flight into a musician’s fingers, her little lantern shone out, over the lake, brushing its lustrous fingers over a sudden quiet ripple of the dark waters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // The medical treatment shown in this chapter is out-of-date - current best practice advises against wrapping cracked or broken ribs, because that increases the odds of getting pneumonia or losing lung capacity. Follow the advice of your licensed medical practitioner.


	23. In the Light

The last singing strains of Loewe’s _Resurrection of Lazarus_ faded into the darkness and the water, and Sylvie put down her bow. She’d been at it for an hour and her fingers, a little out of practice, were starting to ache, and burn where they touched the gut strings of her father’s old fiddle. The instrument was rich in the scent of beeswax, and resin, and a shade of his favourite pipe tobacco.

It is all very well to make a grand romantic gesture, in the manner of a character in an opera, but in time one’s sense of perspective asserts itself and reminds one that it is, in fact, an operatic gesture, meant for the glorious paroxysms of the stage and not, after all, daily life. And one begins to doubt. Ordinarily Sylvie would have told such doubts to go hang themselves, but she was tired, and the strange stage that her friendship with the acerbic, lonely voice in the walls was currently in had taken its toll. She was a sturdy girl; she would be back tomorrow, no doubt.

As she set the bow in its case the cat that had been sleeping behind her ankles stiffened and growled and she heard a slow clap, then another. Looking up, she saw three workmen, roughly dressed, staring at her with frank interest, their cheeks flushed red with drink. “Are you a rat, Miss?” one asked. “Not much but rats come down here.”

“Do I look like one?” she asked, keeping her tone of voice pleasant. The cat against her ankles crouched low to the ground, its hackles raised as it growled, high and serious.

“Well, I dunno,” one of the workmen said, grinning amiably.

Another added, “We’re allowed to kill rats, see. Every now and then. Keeps us sharp.”

“Then… no,” she answered. “I’m not a rat.”

Suddenly, from behind the darkness that defied Sylvie’s little light, there came a great thundering shout, “YOU WERE WARNED NOW GET OUT.”

They flinched. One adjusted a hat ringed with dangling rat-tails and said, reproachfully, “Oh now, sir, you can’t call this trespassing. We’re barely in sight of the water.”

Another, “Give us this one. What can you do anyway? Ye’ve just spooked the boss with yer smoke an’ mirrors, is all.”

“Give us th-” The last broke off suddenly, choking. He pawed at his throat making desperate little coughing sounds and fell to one knee.

The others’ hands shot up to the level of their eyes and they settled into low, easy crouches. “Like that, is it?” Rat-Tail asked, slipping a stained truncheon from his belt. “We know about the lasso-trick. Y’know, the boss has travelled, too? _He_ knows a thing or two, _he_ does… Hey Missy, mebbe you should come with us. Least none of us’ll drive you mad before you die. Well,” he conceded, “mebbe the boss.”

Sylvie set the violin in the balding velvet padding of the case and locked it firmly. It was a precious instrument, ancient and irreplaceable. But keeping it safe cost her time.

Hands came up behind her, grasping. She ducked down, limp as a ragdoll and almost fell out of the grasp but they tightened like steel bands on her and she squeaked against her will, kicking back against her muffling skirts and missing. A voice like graveyard earth whispered in her ear, “Hey Missy, I like you Missy.” Sylvie snarled, furious as the little cat that circled them, and shuddered at the tickle of tails falling against the back of her neck.

“Hoy,” the man holding her called, “can we renegotiate borders now? Sir? Sir? If I threatened the Little Miss, would you just put down your weapons? Just wondering, like.”

“LET HER GO NOW,” came a booming roar from behind them. The ratcatcher holding her swung her round - nothing. He swung back - another man was dead, slumped against a pile of broken brick with his neck snapped.

“So it’s like that, is it?” Sylvie’s captor purred. “Two can play at th-” He sagged behind her, the meat of his body twitching in an obscene vigour behind her. The young woman stepped away and as he collapsed she turned and saw the little black plume of a dart in his left eye. Breath rattled in his throat.

Sylvie skittered away and - finally - saw Athos stalking out of the dark with a short blowpipe held loose in one hand, the black leather molding of his mask brooding and angry under the shaggy mop of his hair. She stopped, wavering in the little puddle of lamplight, wanting him to hold her again. Instead he stopped in the light, an uncertain shadow reaching away. “Who were they?” she asked, voice wobbling in spite of herself. He was so tall, standing over her.

“They were rat-catchers.”

“Then the stories were true?”

“The stories that suggest that you should not come down here are _certainly_ true.”

“I was lonely.”

“You have _friends_ in the _daylight,”_ he gritted.

“They aren’t… you.”

“Do you not understand that it is dangerous here? That _I_ am dangerous?”

“Your point?”

“Have you forgotten that a woman was strangled recently?”

She rolled her eyes. “You didn’t do it, Athos.”

“I was off my head with laudanum all the day after you... left. I don’t know what I did or didn’t do.”

“It isn’t in your nature. You wouldn’t touch Margaret like that.”

“I have killed women before,” Athos said darkly.

“You were kind to _me,”_ she said defiantly.

“This kind of killing, losing them in the dark, it’s never kind. Neither am I. You cannot trust me, Sylvie.”

“I mean before,” Sylvie said, “all those months of talking in the walls. The singing lessons. The, the everything. Don’t I get to weigh that in my judgement of you?”

“It was a distraction. I didn’t come to this place to -” his voice cracked, “to sing for you. I only wanted a quiet place to die.”

“Athos,” Sylvie said kindly, “we don’t always get what we want.”

She stepped forward inside his reach and put her hand to his side, so that she could feel the warmth of him quivering under her touch. His hands stayed loose at his side, paralysed, and he closed his eyes, then opened them. In the light, she knew, they were green. Sylvie raised her other hand, pulled it back, then in a rush of courage set her finger to a point under his chin to tilt his face to her.

Athos flinched.


	24. The Rosy Hours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> //CW: I often write Milady de Winter in a sympathetic light, because reasons. This is not one of those times. Also, some… relatively... non-graphic references to executions and torture.
> 
> // The flashback is a remix of one of the story elements from the book and is entirely fictional. There was a lot going on in Iran in the 19th century, and I don’t have scope in this story to do the history justice so I’m using a very light hand here. But yes, female poets and practitioners of satire existed in Iran then as they do now.

"Tell me a story,” the Frenchman said.

It was late afternoon and the low light of the sun cast itself red throughout Porthos’ rooms, striking gaudy red notes in the brocade robe that he was wrapped in, ensconced in makeshift splendour against a pile of cushions stacked neatly on the divan and mindful of his sore ribs. As Aramis leaned against his side, a quiet, cheerful warmth wrapped in bright borrowed plumage, Porthos lifted his hand against the sun and watched the light showing itself at the edges of his hand through the transparency that solid skin could have. It dyed his hand red. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” he asked in reply.

"Going to Naval College when I was fourteen,” Aramis said promptly. “I thought myself well old enough to earn a living for my family - I had reasons, never doubt it - but… some things didn’t work out.”

“Your mother didn’t want you to go?”

“She did,” Aramis answered. “I’d never get a better chance at a good career and I should bloody well take it, she said, so I followed her advice, _et cetera, ad infinitum.”_ He caught Porthos’ hand out of the lowering sunlight and interlaced warm fingers. “Then her letters stopped. She was moved on for vagrancy or some-such one too many times, I suspect, and -” He shrugged. “I have not the foggiest notion where her bones lie. Not many people keep track, for vagrants and so-forth.”

“Your brother know that story?”

Aramis rustled against his side. “Charles is grieving,” he said at last, “and he wants family around him, even a scandalous fellow such as myself. He doesn’t need more mopy stories to dwell on.”

“You don’t trust that boy with your pain.”

“You don’t trust me with yours,” Aramis answered, but he said it comfortably, kissing the knuckles of Porthos’ hand, easy in the silence.

“You want to hear a story of Mazandaran?”

“If you want to tell it, my friend.” He turned Porthos’ hand in his and kissed the pads of all his fingers, one after another, sweetly patient.

“I grew up a little rough myself,” Porthos admitted. “My family had had… troubles. I came up through a _madrassah,_ if a small one, and I know where my mother and my father are buried. But attaining the position of _dārugheh_ meant a great deal to me, you understand.”

“My friend the magistrate.” Aramis smiled softly to himself, dropping a kiss in the centre of Porthos’ palm. Porthos huffed lightly, but did not pull away.

“A second father to me was Tariq, a nobleman of that province and a great general. He was strict in his teaching, and a kind man; he taught me to love the law. No father could have been as proud as he, when I got my place in the governor's court. That was when the governor was still holding audiences, before his… _health_ became an issue.”

“That was where you met Athos?”

“Mn. Architect, composer, inventor. He was quiet, a terrible heathen, didn’t smile much. He could make you laugh, just with a couple of words and a little tilt of his crooked mouth. And he loved the governor’s wife.

“There’s a numbness you get,” Porthos said, looking away from the sun to the horrible wallpaper, the loops and curlicues in gray and green winding back on each other, at his trousers neatly folded on the dresser and the letter from Tariq in the pocket. “There’s a numbness you get. Not like a rock rolling down hill, like you’re in a room and the walls shrink in, and you, you accommodate to that but they shrink in some more, and you’re walking around but you can’t move your arms too far, and then you can’t breathe, and then the light is going.” He breathed in himself, careful of his strains and bruises. “My Lady liked to watch Athos play with his pretty lasso. Sometimes she would set him against an armed man or three in an open courtyard, big men, confident. He’d stand there, not looking at anything much, with the string dangling in his hands, and they’d charge on in and - _thwip!_ \- he had it around their throats. He made it look so easy… she liked that. But best of all she liked it among the metal trees, each one built cunningly out of steel and iron and bronze with the sun making them all golden-bright, to watch him stalk them like a cat. I could hear her clap her hands behind the carved lattice. ‘Do it again!’ she’d call to him, and then she’d call for iced sherbet or another cup of tea.

“Exemplary punishments, you know how it goes? They were criminals, Aramis, lawbreakers. They would have died one way or another. Then one evening one of her maids went down there, a slight woman with hair hennaed dark red, who she said had poisoned her cat.”

“I don’t hold with cat-poisoners either,” Aramis tried.

“I heard My Lady giggling, when her neck snapped. She wanted to see a girl die.”

He felt Aramis’ arm light and bracing where it draped over his shoulders, and the man’s hand folded his own onto his solar plexus and patted. It hurt, but Porthos sucked in dusty air. “Your guillotine was meant to be a kindness, you said before.”

“Well there’s ‘meant’ and then there’s what happened, not so?” the Frenchman replied.

“Is this a kinder country, after the blood stopped flowing?”

Aramis shrugged. “Stopped?”

Into his silence, Porthos continued, “There was a young woman, a poet, Tariq’s daughter. Samara was… not numb. She exercised the ancient right of poets to criticise the great.”

“The great,” Aramis said softly, “are known for exercising their right to kill poets.”

“Yes.” Porthos swallowed. “It was the middle of summer, when her turn came to go in the garden. And she was the one that Athos refused to touch. He hung his lasso on the branch of an iron oak tree and stalked off… but My Lady would let neither of them leave. Instead she uncovered the mirrors on the inner walls so that the light would fold in on itself and the heat would rise. No water in there, no softness, not the rustle of an honest leaf… he could have killed her neatly so that she would not suffer but Athos refused. He offered her his cloak, to keep the heat off, and told her to wait until night came, that they could get out then, he told her to endure.

“But the sun. The heat. It drives anyone mad. Near to evening when the light was turning rosy, she found the lasso dangling from a tree branch and she - found her exit.”

“She hung herself.”

“Mn. It was probably quick. I think. Athos himself collapsed and landed with his face against one of the trees; it burned him down to the bone. But he lived. I - smuggled his body out, and patched him up; I found him travel papers and a way out of the country; I made sure he lived.”

“Porthos,” Aramis said softly into the failing light, “who arrested Samara?”

“It was the law,” Porthos repeated, in a strangled whisper. “It was the law, to follow My Lady’s orders. So I did. I went to Tariq’s house and I found her in an inner garden, touching her fingers to the water in the pool. She had a scarf threaded with gold over her hair and when she looked up the sun caught her eyes amber like a young lion’s. She was expecting me.”

“Shh, shhh,” whispered Aramis, rubbing the nape of the big man’s neck.

“It was the law,” whispered Porthos.

And he wept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Taking precedent from the life and death of Táhirih (Fatimah Baraghani/Umm-i-Salmih), poet, women’s rights activist, radical theologian (and mother of three) earlier that century, Porthos-the-Magistrate might well have expected a certain amount of fluffing around with house arrests and whatnot instead of an execution for a woman of Samara bint Tariq’s position, at least not so _soon._ This is a work of fiction, and My Lady is a nasty piece of work. In the meantime, Táhirih was a very interesting woman and you can read about her here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Táhirih


	25. Good Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Let’s be honest, Athos is a creeper in this story. A _friendly_ creeper, but still, undeniably a creeper. And I'm, uh, apologising in advance for the end of the chapter. We’re near the end of the act. Uh, and stuff.

Anne Mauricia never used an alarm clock. As high as her obscure rooms were under the Opera House roof, the creak and tick of it as it adjusted to the cooling and heating of the day was as reliable as any timepiece. She stirred under her sheets and blankets, her son warm in her arms. As unruffled as he showed himself in these strenuous days, he still forsook his little trundle bed at night and cuddled into her as if he were still part of her body. Practiced as Anne’s serene exterior was, she was disinclined to stop him.

The roof yawned, on cue. Louis sighed in his sleep. The castor wheels of the trundle bed squeaked as the occupant turned ov-

Anne’s eyes flicked open.

Cautiously, she peered over the side of her narrow bed. Below, on the low trundle, young Sylvie Baudin curled on her side, one fine-boned hand tucked up near her mouth. At another creak from the roof, her own eyes flickered and opened. She sat up in a rush. _“Ehh??”_

“Good morning,” Anne said serenely. Her son poked his curly head up and waved, also.

“Ah, right, good morning, Madame Mauricia, Louis,” Sylvie said faintly, tucking her feet up under the light blanket. “Ah… I didn’t wake you, coming in last night?”

Anne, who - despite her current chaste existence - had been happily, if briefly, married, noticed the languor in Sylvie’s eyes, sweet lips reddened without the aid of a rouge-pot, and, nearly hidden under the sensible flannel dressing-gown that was her sole garment, a mark on her collarbone the size perhaps of a two-centime piece, too red to be a bruise. The girl noticed the direction of Anne’s eyes and her light brown skin flushed rosy. The faintest curve of a smile touched the corner of Anne’s pale lips. “Not at all,” she replied. She patted her son’s arm. “Louis, would you start breakfast, please?” He bounced out of bed with the energy of the young and trotted in his nightgown to the other room. A scrap of tune a British stagehand had liked floated through her mind. _I like pickled onions, I like piccalilli…_

“You’re not bothered?”

Anne looked at the girl seriously. “Only if you are.” She cocked her head. “Do you want me to be?”

Sylvie shook her head, still blushing. “But I want it on record that Athos is an appalling ass.”

“Well, yes,” Anne acknowledged. “He lives under an Opera House and some of it, tragedy to bedroom farce, has rubbed off on him.”

_Pickled cabbage is all right, with a bit of cold meat on a Sunday night._

“So, um, how long have you known Ghost?” Sylvie ventured cautiously.

“We are not lovers,” Anne said, getting that out of the way. “My son wanders a little much sometimes and Athos retrieved him once. It is, or was - or still is? - an alliance of mutual benefit. And I find I quite enjoy working behind the scenes for other people’s tranquility, if only in a small way.” Another faint smile touched her lips, that widened as her son came back carrying two tin mugs of sweet black coffee, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. _“Thank you,_ Louis.” He grinned up at her. One of his baby-teeth was looking a bit wobbly, she thought.

_I can grow tomatoes, but what I do prefer..._

“It isn’t all opera,” said Sylvie, sipping carefully, “that makes Athos act that way.”

“Of course not. Art without feelings is only decoration.”

“And feelings without art are…”

“Still feelings, as painful or brutish or sweet as they always were.”

The girl flushed hot again.

 _... is a little bit of cucum, I-come, you-come, little bit of cucumber._ Anne choked slightly on her own hot coffee.

The perimeter alarm jangled, and there was a clacking of little feet several corridors away which sounded familiar. Anne belted on her best flannel dressing gown over her plain nightdress and slipped to the door, composed again and serene as she opened it to Therese and Simone and little Fleur.

“Hi, can we babysit Louis again? We -”

\- “promise we won’t lose him this time and -”

\- “anyway it was only for half an hour, pish, what’s half an hour? And Simone’s Maman said he could come and visit -”

\- “she’s really nice, plus no-one would suspect he’s there…”

Therese trailed off, looking past Anne to Sylvie, sipping coffee on the bed with her arm around Louis. The dressing gown had slipped again, and in the tiny room the little coin-sized mark was clearly visible. Therese’s hands rose to cover her mouth like one of the wise monkeys.

“Oh,” said Simone.

“I knew it,” said Fleur.

“No, you didn’t,” said Simone.

“Good morning,” said Sylvie. She sipped from her cup.

 

**

 

Aramis opened the door and Constance shrieked.

It was a little shriek, of startlement only, and she said, from behind covered eyes, “Sorry, your hair rather leapt out at me.”

Aramis blinked. “Ah,” he said softly. He’d yet to set to with shaving brush, razor, and comb… sans pomade his hair was a riotous mare’s nest of curls and cow-licks. “Would it help if I put on a hat?”

She peeked through her fingers. “I think I’m alright, once the first shock is past.” Lowering her hands the young lady said, “I was about to ask M. Nikbin if he would care to come on an outing to the Grand Jetty with Ch- d’Artagnan and me this afternoon.”

“Ah, a group excursion,” he answered, eyes twinkling, “nothing could be more decorous or respectable.”

“Oh, you,” she said, batting him lightly on the arm. “And yourself, of course, I just didn’t realise you’d stayed the night.”

Still barefoot he bowed her into Porthos’ rented rooms, where the Persian, moving carefully around sore ribs, had a samovar lit and was already brewing bright and bitter tea for the morning. The letter, on beautiful paper and sealed with strange wax, had disappeared.

“Oh!” from the doorway. It was his brother, dressed for a morning in town in a lovely dark-brown suit. “You’re here. I was just -”

“Going to invite M. Nikbin for an afternoon outing?” Mirth tickled at Aramis’ ribs.

“Um, yes.” His younger brother’s eyes strayed up to Aramis’ wild hair and down to his ankles, then up to hover at the borrowed, bright robe. “You… stayed the night.”

“I believe so.”

“Is that… wise?”

 

**

 

The steel train snaked through the quiet land, chasing the tail of dawn.

“Why are you here?” the scarfed stranger asked suddenly.

“Why are you?” Aramis replied.

“I’m… following someone.” The stranger’s eyes glittered under the brim of his hat.

“What a coincidence,” Aramis smiled. The telegram rustled in his pocket, a few words: _GONE TO P-GUIREC EARLY THIS YEAR STOP COMING WITH? SB END_ “I missed the train she was on, that’s all.”

“Is that why you, a gentleman, ride in second-class?”

“As a gentleman, I believe I can ride in any carriage and stride down any corridor. That is the deal gentlemen _get_ along with the silver spoon, no?” He bit his tongue - that had come out altogether too sharp. There was an alarming intimacy that came with talking to a stranger, with the illusion that nothing said could come back to haunt.

Charles’ words sounded again in his ears. _Is that… wise? ...Brother, a word._ He twitched inside his coat, looking out at the lightening sky.

“You sound bitter,” the stranger said.

“But I am a simple man,” Aramis answered, “sweet-natured and without complication.”

“Hm.”

_Have you thought about the look of the thing? People might talk…_

“You really are a wonderful conversationalist, did you know that?”

“I’ve hardly said a word.”

“Precisely - the best conversations are in the silences, and knowing when to listen.”

The man in the scarf _harrumphed._ He tucked his nose into his scarf, but not before a faint curl showed at the corner of his pale mouth.

_What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?_

Aramis shuffled in his seat again, trying not to think of the conversation he’d had with d’Artagnan - Charles - later that morning, just the two of them, in a gilt-edged hotel suite that might serve for a house, for another family.

_’People might talk,’ brother? They already talk, my little Parisian._

_What’s that supposed to mean? About me and Constance?_

_About me and you, Charles._

He’d been so angry with the boy, for turning a quiet and intimate night with a friend into something scandalous, sordid, for once again playing the _pater familias._ And a black and bitter laugh had welled up inside him. _As your cousin I would not have evoked comment. As a bastard, pfeh, these things happen. Your mysterious older brother, now, legitimate of course but morganatic, to nobody can say whom… that’s a delightful little mystery that the gossips simply adore. I am a walking scandal, Charles, because you love neither truth nor discretion._

_You’re my brother._

_I might as well be your valet, for all the choice I get in it._

And the hurt in the boy’s young eyes, because hurting children was what Aramis did now, was it? What a crown to an illustrious career.

_But then, while the rest of us scuffle along the rich always get what they want. One can talk of revolution, but that’s just the way it is, no?_

“Whatever it is, do you… want to talk about it?” the stranger asked carefully.

The beguiling intimacy of the lonely.

“Not really,” said Aramis, smiling. He stood up sharply and moved to the end door of the compartment. It led to the gusty, rattling junction between carriages - he crossed with one long stride to the next and peeked in the door. Third class, a collection of thin and tired people bundled up in made-over clothes and blankets, leaning on each other’s shoulders for pillowing and support, fragrant with the odour of those who could not often afford hot wash-water. As he peered into the fuggy dimness, a woman at the back stirred, peeling a hard-boiled egg for her little one. He smiled briefly, a tipping at the corners of his mouth, then shut the door to keep out the draft.

Steadying his weight against the sway and judder of the train, he looked out into the countryside. He could see ahead a few lights for Lannion, the closest station to Perros-Guirec, and all around the fields were lightening with the cautious presence of the pre-dawn. Birds tossed their song about, early risers that they were, and mist lay across the earth like a lace scarf on a plump and sleeping matron. In the dewy sharpness, Aramis caught a whiff of the drunken grassy smell of silage. There was a curve in the track ahead, and the train was slowing. He shrugged to himself, and at the slowest part of the arc he let himself fall, rolling easily through the uncertain padding of a fallow field and coming to his feet with one of his shiny shoes sunk in mud. He grinned and started walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Is Athos the kind of guy who would carry a girl from the basement to the attic so that he doesn’t have to have the Morning After conversation? He absolutely is. Moving on.
> 
> // Anne’s song is anachronistic. “A Little Bit of Cucumber” was written in 1915 by T. W. Connor, and also, I messed with some of the lyrics. As far as I know it _wasn’t_ secretly about sex. -https://monologues.co.uk/musichall/Songs-L/Little-Bit-Cucumber.htm


	26. Perros-Guirec

The golden sands of the beach stretched out to the sea. This far north the late summer that Paris had been enjoying was tinged crisp as the first bite of an apple by the coming autumn. The pilgrim crowds, with walking sticks and cockle-shells tucked in their caps instead of feathers, had mostly dissipated, flocked south with the sun, and it was weeks before the last great fair of the season. Aramis made tracks in the sand alone. He flicked his eyes out to a handful of fishing boats in the vivid waters, then up to the tumbled pinkish rocks around the little cove. He was alone. He’d walked here, skirting past Lannion in the morning gloaming - there was a great fuss of lights and noise at the station which he didn’t care for - and letting the early diligence rattle past, loaded with passengers inside and on the roof with the baggage, a postilion in front riding one of the small, stout lead horses underneath the coachman’s whip. A passenger on the imperial at the back turned to look as the heavy coach jingled past, and Aramis tapped an imaginary hat-brim to the muffled man.

“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders…” he muttered to the sun and the crisp air, eyes soft. It wasn’t far from here that he’d first met Sylvie, half-drowning himself to rescue the starched-lace kerchief of a girl with dark-bright eyes and a generous mouth. Well and so. He closed his eyes and tilted his face into the sun.

After a time he shook himself and continued on - he had an appointment to make. He turned when he reached the tumbled rocks and blinked. There was a man on the beach behind him, a clot of darkness in a dark hat and a muffling scarf. Only one set of footprints wrote itself across the tawny sand, as if the man were a shadow or the remnant of a dream: a nice trick. Aramis climbed over the rocks and found a long little house. At the back door he charmed a bucket of water out of the housewife and tidied himself up with a comb-and-razor from one pocket, his sailor’s hussif from another - neither his mother nor any captain he’d sailed under would have tolerated slovenliness for more than a heartbeat. Clean and tidy again, he walked to the Setting Sun Inn and then the ancient Church of St-Jacques.

Sylvie was at neither.

Aramis turned out his pockets and paid the priest for a mass for old Hubert Baudin, and another for his mother. Sylvie might be performing a short pilgrimage of her own, but she would find her way back here no doubt, to her father’s little tomb. He sat on a pew in the back, hands in pockets, gaze wandering about the bright painted statues, the rough carving of saints and shepherds and dragons on ancient columns part-covered by new (old) construction.

The old priest, Duvall, didn’t remember him, though Aramis recalled sitting through a sermon or three, and rattling around in here sometimes when the rain was cold and his mother was working. Duvall did not have many years of life left, by the look of his rheumy eyes and shaking hands. They’d bury him here, Aramis imagined, near Hubert, the both of them fetched up on a dry spit of land after the tides of humanity were done with them. The words of the mass rolled over him; Aramis slept.

 

**

 

“No, I don’t know where he’s gone. He’s not m-my servant or anything and I’m not his keeper: if he wants to go off alone for a bit that’s up to him.”

Constance narrowed her eyes at the young man in the doorway of the first-class hotel suite and the Comte d’Artagnan broke, as a piece of bone china does under a hammer. “It’s all gone wrong,” he said woefully. By the shadows under his eyes, he hadn’t slept. It looked good on him, in a poetical, tragic kind of way, but Constance shook herself out of that particular reverie.

Putting her gloved hands to his cheeks, she said seriously, “Charles. Did you kill your brother and grind him into sausages?”

He reeled back, aghast. “What? Who _does_ that?”

“Oh, like that butcher in Montmartre?” asked Porthos.

“They never proved anything,” said Sylvie.

“That guy moved to Marseille,” said Marsac. They all looked at him. The sailor, a friend of Aramis’ picked up in the tail of the day’s search, lifted a sheepish hand. “Lieutenant Jean-René Marsac,” he said. “I’m new.”

“Why are you looking for him anyway?” d’Artagnan snapped.

Behind Constance Sylvie looked down the hall where a maid was passing with a stack of freshly laundered towels. A red-capped porter came out suddenly from a nearby room. She met Porthos’ eyes: he shrugged. “No… reason,” she said, “in particular. We… were…”

“... expecting him,” Porthos said helpfully.

“For tea and refreshments,” Marsac added, adjusting the cuffs of his bottle-green coat, “on account of I haven’t seen my old shipmate for months.”

“Exactly,” said Constance, gathering herself. “We were planning on _tea,_ and absolutely nobody heard -” her voice lowered - “M’sieu Treville sending off a party to look for him.”

D’Artagnan blinked at her. “You’d better come in,” he said.

 

**

 

When Aramis woke it was dark in the church, all the shadows of the evening gathered in to gloom under the stone roof. He shook off a rough blanket that smelled of mothballs; his senses attuned to the quiet, even the fall of the cloth seemed loud. A faint scrape on stone; in the quiet he could hear a man breathing. He rose silently and paced to the wall, keeping himself against it where he was harder to see in the darkness. At the open door at the back he bumped against the old wheat-measure set as a second font for the parishioners. Backing a few silent paces, he pulled the signet ring off his finger and tossed it - it landed with a delicate splash in the dark water.

No movement.

He waited.

Nothing.

Soft as a night breeze he slipped out the door into the churchyard. Painted white and black in the moonlight stone angels and flat grave-stones stretched away. There was a darker chasm in the ground where the keepers were unearthing old bones to store more neatly in the little bone-house, and so free up the ground for new tenants. Aramis, nimble-footed sailor that he was, stepped around it easily.

He passed around the ossuary and set his hand to it respectfully. His mother might be in there after all. The jumbled skulls, and femurs, and dainty phalanges rested silently in democratic rest behind the ornamented iron grill.

Another shift - a thorny cane from one of the yard’s roses, tearing at fabric. Aramis smiled to himself.

“I am a simple man,” he announced to the yard, “and I labour to be easy to speak with.” Silence. “Should I keep my hand at the level of my eyes?”

Shift of stone on stone, the rustle of fabric.

“If I wanted you dead, you would be.” The voice was light and rich, familiar from a sleepless night on the train.

“Ah, my friend, I know how things can get… complicated, when feelings are involved.” He shifted around the shadowed box of the ossuary.

“But Sylvie _likes_ you,” the stranger of the train said, light and ironic, “logically, I must like you also.”

“I’ve always found _liking_ even more of a complication.” Aramis shrugged. “It’s easier not to feel things, but there it is.”

He turned again, hunting, and then, unexpected, caught his foot in a gravedigger’s gear, the tackle left out in a shockingly sloppy fashion. Cursing, Aramis toppled.

As he fell his fingers, hooked to catch a statue’s wing, landed against the stranger's face. On another man Aramis’ fingernails might have slid away harmlessly. On another man they might have left red scratches, tracks of his passing, and come away bloody.

On this stranger, come out of the night, he scraped, inadvertently, at the kind of putty used by theatrical performers or those who prepared the dead. It came off in his hand, soft as rotting flesh, leaving a cavity in the man’s face and inside it, pale white bone.

Athos stepped back.

“Seen enough?” he rasped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _The pilgrim crowds_ \- apparently Perros-Guirec is one of the stops on the Camino de Santiago, the ancient collection of pilgrim routes. (When I looked that up, I was flooded with travel ads for the Camino for weeks afterwards. It’s still a popular route.)
> 
> // _underneath the coachman’s whip_ \- and other details, from https://www.geriwalton.com/diligence-coac/
> 
> // _”They that go down to the sea in ships…”_ \- Psalm 107:23-24
> 
> // _his sailor’s hussif from another_ \- a sewing kit, but they were generally called some variation of ‘housewife’/’hussif’ https://hands-across-the-sea-samplers.com/the-soldiers-hussif/
> 
> // _lifted a sheepish hand... “I’m new.”_ \- I, uh, may have lifted that bit from _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ (the cartoon). (It always made me laugh.)
> 
> // Nice pictures of the church here: http://www.infobretagne.com/perros-guirec-eglise.htm . I couldn’t find any references to an ossuary at that particular church, but they did exist in Brittany: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-25300-5_5


	27. Oh, no.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't like surprises, there's a brief CW in the end notes. Otherwise, for standard genre plot events, read on.

_Moonlight is the clearest vision,_ Porthos had told him once, _half with eyes, half with heart._ One wondered, then, how a servant of the law managed, in the baking heat of day, in the truest dark of night.

In the moonlight and shadow of the churchyard, Aramis stared at the phantom, Sylvie's Ghost, stepping back and flicking his scarf fussily around himself. On impulse, inappropriate and shockingly rude, Aramis moved in, touching the pads of his fingers to the crater in Athos’ ravaged cheek. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

Athos froze. His hand came up, but lightly, his thumb and forefinger pincering Aramis’ wrist in a phantom grasp. “No,” he said. “Where your hand is there's nothing, just deadness. It is only where there is vigour in the flesh that it pains.”

“I am sorry,” Aramis said.

“Others suffer more.”

“I'm still sorry.” Aramis licked his lips. “What have you done with Sylvie?”

Athos stared at him, pale eyes unreadable. “As far as I know, the young lady is still in Paris.”

“Then - you brought _me_ here? Why send the telegram? I am, M _’_ sieu _,_ an easy man to talk to. Indeed, it is difficult to inspire a cessation.”

“I didn’t.”

Aramis moved his hand away, or tried, but the other man let him get only so far before his lightly pincering hand shifted to a circling grip around his wrist, solid as iron and nearly as cold.

“Are you a sinner, Aramis René d’Herblay?”

Aramis’ eyes widened. “Not more than the normal amount, I hope. I tithe to the church; I make the amends that I can, to the living and to God; I go on.”

“Sylvie is…”

“A friend. Old, and dear.”

“Porthos is…”

Aramis smiled. “Another friend. New, but also very dear.” He considered Athos carefully, his wrist unresisting where it was fixed in the other man’s hand. “Your story haunts his dreams.” Tilting his head, he added, “I’ve wondered, trivial as it is, why the Opera Garnier? Why that heap of stone in particular?”

“My father, Charles Garnier, designed it,” Athos said simply. “It is home to me.”

“Hm.” Aramis stirred on his feet. He would have paced, if the Phantom had not prisoned him. Looking out over the graves, he said, “The name of the man of shadow, somber, we are -”

“Are you a killer, Aramis René d’Herblay?”

Aramis glanced back, sloe-dark eyes inscrutable. “What a question.” He studied Athos’ face. “I have killed in the past,” he said at last. “I can’t say I liked it.” Athos waited, silent. “Twice, when my vessel was overtaken by pirates. Once, a shipmate.” His eyelashes flickered. “It was… a complicated situation. If I’d realised what was happening earlier I might have - well.” His eyes met Athos’ again. “I make my penance to the dead, also. Does that satisfy you?” His wrist was released and he lowered his arm, turning and pacing a few metres away.

“Your intentions towards Mlle Baudin?” he inquired over his shoulder.

“Are my own,” Athos replied.

“I am unsatisfied with that answer.”

“And yet, it is all you shall have.”

Aramis tsked softly. “Then, why did you lure me here?”

“I didn’t.”

 

**

 

_earlier that day_

 

“So, I’ve been all over the cafes,” Constance said briskly, perched with her parasol by her knees on one of the lavish couches in d’Artagnan’s sitting room, “and M. Nikbin tried the Gallery of Machines _.”_

“He mentioned he wanted to see it,” Porthos said quietly from beside Marsac, his eyes tight and his mask of jovial affability put away for the moment.

“I’ve been all up and... down the Opera House,” Sylvie added. “You did not have any police come to your rooms? We left a note earlier, but...”

“I’ve been out,” said d’Artagnan, hollow-eyed. “I was looking through the cabarets and clubs last night - we had a fight yesterday, and I.” He stood abruptly. “No policeman would be interested in a private argument.” Something about the shifting light over his forehead and nose, the set of his shoulders made him look older - not woebegone, not angry, _older_ \- the man he would be in five years. “And yet they look for my brother. _Tell me.”_

Constance caught a sobbing breath.

 

**

 

_even earlier that day_

 

As it happened, Constance had bought her own ice at the Grand Jetty alone. She’d had a pleasant Sunday afternoon underneath her parasol, watching the limpid waters of the Seine, and declined to feel pettish about little noblemen who stood her up with nothing more than an elegantly scribbled note.

Now she walked through the great hall that housed the Grand Stair of the Opera House, the low heels of her shoes clicking on the stone as she walked to the single foot of the stately, divided stairs. She wasn’t coming in for early practice over any ill-feeling over that Sunday. It had been a pleasant afternoon, on her own. Very pleasant. Rather, as the lead dancer of the company, with new management, she wanted to give her _best_ performance. That is all.

The silence echoed, in the hall, with the Opera House’s walls thick enough to keep out the city noise, and nearly empty - the great chandeliers unlit, only one scrubwoman with a mop, cleaning, and a pair of little dancers on the left branch of the stairs. One had a great sense of ownership of the House, walking through it this early.

“Telegram from Lannion,” called the young Cadet Brujon, waving a printed bit of paper as he trotted past towards the grim-faced Commissioner Treville who stepped out of the shadows on the edge of the great room, unobtrusive behind a snuffed chandelier. “Nobody of that description came off the…”

The words faded as he trotted away and Constance moved on, then returned in a trick of the echoes as she reached the lowest step. Treville’s low and stolid voice: “Is the witness ready to give a proper statement?” and, more sharply, “Then get the reporter to sit with her, he’s calmed the woman’s hysteria before. And keep looking for d’Herblay in the cit-” His voice halted, then began again, louder. “Is there something I can help you with, Mme Bonacieux?”

Constance stopped, looking at the Police Commissioner over her shoulder. “Not at all, M. Treville.” She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You are working very early this morning, I must say. I am glad that Paris’s Finest are still working the case.” He looked at her stolidly, face grey as the dawn. With all her training in deportment and the stage, Constance continued on calmly up the marble steps. She knew the Opera House well; it was easy enough to double back and warn Aramis of whatever it was.

She took the left branch, keeping her back straight and her feet steady, and noted as she neared the two little dancers that Fleur and Simone were still holding each other. Fleur tucked her head into the crook of the darker girl’s shoulder, their hands lightly clasping each other’s slender waists. They swayed on their feet.

Gathering her long night-blue skirts about her Constance stepped towards them - maybe the girls had seen something. She clucked her tongue. They ignored her.

Then Constance saw the tears, squeezing glass-bright out of Simone’s tight-squeezed eyes and trailing down her cheeks. And on Fleur’s short, full skirt, the staining -

“Where,” Constance murmured, the horror curdling her stomach, “where’s Therese?”

Fleur shuddered. Simone’s face screwed tighter and she folded in and around the other girl.

“Oh, no.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Minor character death
> 
> // No, I wouldn't recommend just up and touching someone's injury, healed or no. People can get twitchy, above and beyond the general manners of when it's okay to touch a stranger's face. But this is a story and sometimes people do inappropriate things in stories.
> 
> // _Moonlight is the clearest vision…_ \- Iranian proverb.
> 
> // Ah… aficionados of opera should note that _this_ version of _La Cenerentola_ has been adapted for a short ballet in the middle wherein the tutor Alidoro, who is also the composer Rossini, dances with the Spirits of Truth and Beauty. They like having a ballet, does the Paris Opera. It… all makes sense when you, uh, think about it.


	28. Documents in the Case

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // CW: Description of a corpse.
> 
> // Ideally I would have hunted down a French book of commercial telegraph code (converting Useful Phrases into words unlikely to come up otherwise, to save time and money), but I’d have had to translate it back again. So I used Adams Cable Codex, 7th edition. Translations in the end notes.

**Telegram to Mme Mauricia, from Lannion Telegraph Office. Rec’d Paris Opera House front desk 8.27 am**

_INSTITUTOR, CAPACIOUS, AMAZONIAN, PERROS-GUIREC - ATHOS_

*

Anne frowned at the slip of flimsy yellow paper in her hand. The typeset letters, set with mechanical sloppiness inside the printed form, were in one of the common commercial codes - setting useful phrases to uncommon words to save in transmitting time and cost. Athos, typically, loved it, clouding his messages in obscurity when he could well afford the extra sous.

‘Institutor’ she recognised, a general query as to how things were at home. ‘Amazonian’ - where to send replies. Face impassive, she read it again. She would need to get her copy of the codebook.

By the front desk the attendant, Old Serge Berger, smiled at her, his white hair falling wispy around his shoulders. “It’s going to be a shit of a day, Ma’am.” He winced. “‘Scuse language.”

“No,” Anne replied, steadily but with a great amount of feeling, “‘Shit’ about covers it.” She would have to let Simone’s mother know, and Fleur’s father, though both would be working at this hour. Therese lived in the House’s dormitories out of necessity rather than convenience - she had no-one but the other dancers. Mentally Anne began composing a list of funeral arrangements for when Therese’s body was released - the girl would have liked a Catholic burial, she thought.

A controlled flurry of gendarmes walked past, around a khaki canvas stretcher holding a small form huddled under a rough blanket. Sticking out awkwardly, a small white hand stiff with rigor-mortis clutched at nothing but the air. Through several walls of the front room Louis voice came through, clear and strident, “- _not_ shutting down for the day, do you have _any idea_ how much it costs to run this place? We need to keep working to -”

On the other side of the foyer, Commissioner Treville snapped to one of his cadets, “Wire Lannion again, get them to interview the train staff for anyone who looked like d’Herblay. Is that woman ready to talk yet?”

As she watched, the journalist Rochefort ushered young Margaret Sal out of one of the annexes, a protective arm around her hunched shoulders. His blue eyes strayed to Anne by the desk, then to the stretcher and its silent occupant. He stood a little straighter in himself, then silently ushered the young woman to Treville.

With a gentleness surprising in a man of his gruff exterior, Treville took Margaret’s hand, and asked, “Mademoiselle, I’d like to ask you some questions about the things you saw. Are you ready to do that?” Convulsively, the maid nodded her head, and Rochefort released her into the Police Commissioner's custody.

Watching them, her mouth barely moving, Anne told Old Serge, “I never received this telegram.”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” he told her, eyes wide. Then, “Oh wait, I think I have that _book_ you lent me last week, I’m all done.” He ducked his head behind the desk and shuffled things about, huffing, before coming out with a bundle of commercial code books, their cardboard covers scuffed, in a loose wrapping of brown paper. One of them was the kind she needed. “Staff gotta look after staff,” he told her, grinning.

A door slammed open and Louis Bourbon looked down at the scene in shock. “What do you _mean_ you’re taking her out the front door!! _Have you no idea of the bad press??_ Take her out one of the side entrances, it’s not like she can die _more_ if you take five minutes longer, _do I have to think of everything??”_

 

**

 

**Transcripts from police records, 25th September, taken by Police Commissioner Jean-Armand Treville.**

_S. Pepin: ... We were up in the dormitories, and I woke up. Therese’s bed was still empty. We’re supposed to lock the doors at night but sometimes she likes to practice in one of the studios when there’s no-one around. And we’d had a fight. So I elbowed - so I went to Fleur’s bed and woke her up and we just went looking._

_What did we fight about? Nothing. Just girl stuff. It doesn’t matter now._

_She wasn’t in any of the practice rooms. We went all around but she wasn’t, so we went back to bed. Then we tried again, um, maybe at 4 in the morning? No, 5, I heard the church bells ringing. One of the cats was scratching at a cupboard door. In the big studio. We opened it up and she._

_I’m sorry. Thank you for the handkerchief. Yes, I can continue. Therese fell out, all stiff like wood. And cold, but her hair was soft and her arms and legs had stiffened up sort of crooked and her eyes were open and her mouth but her hair was soft and._

_Yes, I can keep going. Can I have a glass of water? Thank you. She smelled different and I wondered if she’d changed her perfume because - it doesn’t matter now. Girl stuff. A floorboard creaked and we turned around but nobody was there. Um, she was in street clothes. Red. Red lines around her throat, sort of jagged like a chain. And she’d kicked off one shoe, we couldn’t find it anywhere..._

*

_M. Sal: ... No. I was at the Gare Saint-Lazare because Mlle Garouville was expecting the arrival of a friend and sent me to escort her to my mistress’s flat. The friend did not arrive, I later realised that I had misunderstood the date she was due. That is my fault._

_I saw Aramis d’Herblay board the night train to Brittany. Why did I pay attention? He is a flamboyant sort of a person, everybody notices him, I - I’m getting confused. I saw Aramis d’Herblay board the night train to Brittany. He had the oddest smile on his face and I don’t why but he was putting a little shoe in his coat pocket. It seemed odd to me. He turned in the doorway of the carriage, looking out, and then he smiled at me. He showed his teeth; it was like a fox grinning. And then I looked at his hands. I recognised the ring on it. Then the train moved off._

_I didn’t know what to do so I talked to my good friend Enrique Rochefort. He is a kind man. We were sitting at a late night bistro near the Opera House when we saw the police arriving and when we asked what was going on I had to contribute my testimony. It is the honest thing to do._

_I recognised the ring on his hand. It is a signet. When - when the Phantom was trying to hang me, that is when I saw it before. I had forgotten it in my panic. I looked at his hands and I recognised the ring. He has such beautiful, gentle hands; it looks like he would be kind - it’s always the ones who look kind that hurt you the most, I’m sorry I can’t. I can’t breathe._

_Be sure our sins will find us out._

 

**

 

**Telegram to “Athos”, at Perros-Guirec Post Office. Rec’d 11.45 am**

_CAPTIOUS, CAPSICUM, MANNEQUIN, STOP. CAPTURE, STOP._

*

Old Serge took the handwritten telegraph form from Anne, but held up his hand at the gold napoléon she would have given him. “Staff gotta look after staff,” he said.

“Nobody but you,” she told him seriously.

“Of course.”

“I can get away in a quarter hour,” he said, folding the form and pocketing it, “’twon’t raise any attention. How… how are little Fleur and Simone?”

“They’re resting quietly upstairs. Somewhere safe.” The girls were in her quarters, with dire orders to look after young Louis - she’d found that work was the best distraction from grief. She tapped one finger irritably on the counter of the desk as, somewhere in the distance, the Great de Garouville  had hysterics. Anne had kept the language of her note as vague as possible, when telling Athos that there had been a disaster. (Though somehow, her codebook did not have an entry for ‘Murder most foul’: she was greatly peeved and would certainly send the company a stern note.) She saw Sylvie across the great foyer, the young woman’s eyes tight. She hurried across the room to talk to her -

“It is not safe here, Madame,” Rochefort said, appearing at Anne’s elbow. “Do you have somewhere to stay?”

Anne turned her head. “Nowhere is safe,” she said. “I learned that a long ago.”

He swallowed, pain showing in his piercing blue eyes. “I would protect you if I could. I'm trying.”

She tilted her head. “I thank you.” She dropped her eyes, lifted them. “You have been spending a great deal of time with young Margaret Sal,” she said, consideringly.

Rochefort held out one strong, clean hand, palm up. “She is a woman who has gone through ghastly experiences. I seek only to comfort.”

Anne considered him silently, then a faint smile touched her lips. “Your kindness does you credit.”

Impulsively, Rochefort seized her hand and kissed her fingers. “If there's anything I can do for you. Or your son. Simply name it.”

She studied his face, reading his eyes, his straw-coloured hair set with bear-grease pomade, with the bitter orange smell of it, the crags of his ruggedly handsome features. Nodding slightly, she tugged her hand away.

Sylvie had disappeared.

 

**

 

**Telegram to Mme Mauricia, from Perros-Guirec Telegraph Office. Rec’d Paris Opera House front desk 3.24 pm**

_REPROBATE, STOP MANNEQUIN RESIDING, RESTING QUIETLY STOP RESPONSORY, STOP - ATHOS_

*

In the palatial rooms that the Comte d’Artagnan rented from the hotel, voices were raised.

“He didn’t do it,” d’Artagnan said flatly. “My brother has the heart of a marshmallow.”

“Of course he didn’t,” said Sylvie, grim and quietly furious. “But someone thinks he did, _Treville_ thinks he did, and mostly what I know about police is that they’ll take easy over _right._ We can’t let this -”

“People change, you know,” said Constance sadly. “Sometimes the ones you least ex-”

 _“He didn’t do it!”_ Sylvie and d’Artagnan shouted at her. She wilted.

Porthos looked at Aramis’ old shipmate Marsac who took a breath, shut his mouth, thought a bit, then said, “Total marshmallow.”

Anne stepped into the room.

“I have a note,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want you all to understand that Athos had a _deeply annoying_ day.
> 
> // Codes used:
> 
> Amazonian - Send all telegrams until further advised to me at __  
> Capacious - Am alone.  
> Captious - Am very anxious to hear from you.  
> Capsicum - Am very anxious to hear about __  
> Capture - An accident, very serious, has occurred.  
> Institutor - Is everything alright and everyone all well at home?  
> Reprobate - I regret deeply to learn of your trouble.  
> Residing - Is not seriously ill, and doctor says there is no cause for alarm  
> Responsory - Let me know what the trouble is.
> 
> Mannequin isn’t in the book. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what Athos and Anne understand it to mean.
> 
> // _his straw-coloured hair set with bear-grease pomade, with the bitter orange smell_ \- bear grease had a reputation for centuries as good for hair growth, and was a popular base for pomade. The best grease was considered to come from Russia. It could be scented in various ways; I picked ‘bitter orange’ for Rochefort because Louis XIV became fond of it.


	29. Coffee and Cake; Sylvie Puts Her Boots On

“Why Perros-Guirec?” d’Artagnan asked tiredly, leaning against the wall with his arms wrapped around his torso. “Just, why in Heaven there?”

Anne shrugged. Marsac looked blank. Constance looked at Porthos, propped carefully in a chair, who looked at Sylvie, who shrugged herself and took a pretty gilt-edged cup from a low table covered in plates and cups and crumbs in front of the sofa. “We’d meant to go out there to visit the graves,” she said, turning her head to look at the young Comte, “just not so soon. I hadn’t told him yet, but I was planning a walking trip to look for where his mother died.” D’Artagnan blinked at her, then nodded.

“It is hard to get good information in code like this,” he mused.

“Yes,” said Marsac, the fair-haired man grinning as he folded one of the telegraph flimsies in half lengthwise then turned in the corners, “we should let the telegraph clerk pass on that he’s wanted for murder, that should -”

They all glared at him and he threw up his hands. “Just joking. We laugh that we may not cry, _et cetera ad infinitum.”_

“M. Nikbin,” d’Artagnan said, looking at the Persian at his seat to the side, “if you cabled your man in Farsi, would he understand?”

“Yes,” said Porthos consideringly, “and that would likely get past the clerk, but the language would be a red flag to anyone looking. And if I were Treville, I would look.”

“It would buy us time, though. I can arrange people to get him out of the country.”

“He won’t thank you,” Marsac said, hands moving on the flimsy again, “if you buy his way out of trouble.” Sylvie shook her head, as did Porthos.

D’Artagnan eyed them frostily. “Feelings heal; lives don’t.”

“His good name,” said Sylvie, “don’t you care about that? About finding justice for Therese?”

He stared at her, face impassive as if it had been carved out of oak. Marsac’s paper glider floated past his head and he snatched it out of the air. “Why are you here?” he asked Marsac.

The naval officer shrugged. “The _Lion of Susa’s_ expedition to the Pole has been funded: I was coming to offer d’Herblay a place. Ice, snow, drunken sun - just as well he’s putting that off, I can’t imagine what came over me thinking of a friend’s career.”

The door opened, unexpected. With a quick shake of her arm Sylvie cast a napkin over the flimsies among the cups; Porthos nipped the flimsy glider out of d’Artagnan’s hand and dropped it out of sight.

“Madame, you are alright,” said Rochefort breathlessly, his cheeks red from running and his hair slightly disarranged from its pomade. “I came as soon as I heard.”

“This is quite excellent coffee,” Anne said, her blue eyes wide and innocent, “though I fear we have drunk the good Comte’s pot down and cannot offer you any.”

“I did not come for,” Rochefort looked unsettled, “coffee. I fear the company you have been keeping is -”

“They have eaten all the cake as well,” Anne said sadly. She glanced affectionately at Porthos, propped in his sturdy chair.

“I’m a big eater,” he said back, a dimple showing in his cheek. “I know that about myself.”

“So I regret but that we can offer you nothing,” Anne continued with a pleasant smile.

Rochefort rocked back on his feet. “At least now,” he said sadly, “we know why d’Herblay kept going on about the bowline knot in that noose that nearly killed poor Margaret. He was trying to brag, brazen in plain sight as men of a psychopathic tendency often are.”

“A bowline is terrible for a noose,” Marsac told him, eyes sharp. “On account of it doesn’t slip. Any sailor would fret on that.”

“A chance to savour the death,” Rochefort told him earnestly, “both at the time, knowing that she died under his control, and to gloat about it after. You are a simple man of the sea, untutored in subtleties. But I, I see the worst of the world.”

“Have a care what you call ‘worst’,” said d’Artagnan.

“Your intentions do you credit, Comte.” The journalist’s china blue eyes shone with sincerity. “To raise up the illegitimate son of a Breton - carnival performer. It’s very _kind._ But… blood will out, and that sort, reared badly -”

The low table exploded as d’Artagnan set his foot on the edge to launch himself across. A coffee cup toppled, the bitter brown liquid spreading over the white cloth but Porthos, himself quickly risen, caught d’Artagnan’s brown coat collar and yanked the young man back. Rochefort continued, “We might all of us be looking at the stars but some are born in the gutter, and stay there, and pampering them only -” Porthos’ hand slipped and the young comte, lean and agile, got over the table, his hands reaching for Rochefort’s skinny throat.

The reporter stumbled backwards rapidly, shutting the door in d’Artagnan’s face. “You have to _see,_ Anne,” he called, muffled by the wood. “You have to understand how dangerous these people are.”

When his cries had finally quieted, Sylvie said, quiet but firm, “I hate that greasy little man.”

“I hate his stupid face,” added Constance.

“I hate the cut of his coat,” said d’Artagnan, colour high in his cheeks.

“His shoes are too shiny,” said Marsac, “there are limits.”

“He’s got a nasty line in tale-telling,” Porthos said darkly. “Also,” he added, one hand to his ribs, “ow.”

“The way he just twists… _everything,”_ Sylvie fumed, “he’s meaner than de Garouville. Journalists are the worst.”

“I loathe that awful fruity smell about him,” said Anne, with a great deal of feeling, “and his presumption, and his pushiness, and his, his -” she stamped her foot, - “I _loathe him.”_

“We have a consensus on one thing at least,” d’Artagnan said wryly, leaning his back against the wall again like a long lean hunting dog at rest. “About Aramis, though…” The party all drew breath. “M. Nikbin,” he went on, “were you in Treville’s place, what would divert you from pursuing a suspect?”

“Another, viable, suspect,” the Persian magistrate said, his eyes hooded. “It would not stop my hunting, but it would distract. Proof of innocence. Or orders from above.”

Constance huffed. “‘Another suspect’,” she said dourly. “Friedrich Brandt and his Prussians -

“Ruritanians,” corrected Anne absently.

“- his Ruritanians only saw a man with his hat pulled low and his scarf pulled high and that covers a lot, even in the warm weather. It’s difficult to tell them one from another, yes?”

“Assuming they were connected,” Sylvie added, bending forward with a huff, “someone with casual access to the Opera House, who could get one of the little dancers alone. Which also covers a lot.” She tugged her neat black ankle boots out from under the table, shook her feet with a grimace, and put them on, working the buttons with a little hook from her pocket.

“Where are you off to?” Constance asked.

“Back to the Opera House,” Sylvie sighed, “to see if I can get anything out of Treville. You stay,” she added, holding up one hand, “keep talking things out.”

But as Constance kissed her on the cheek for luck, d’Artagnan shrugged into his coat and picked a tall hat off the rack. “Nobody’s going anywhere alone,” he declared.

“I’ll be sure to look after you,” Sylvie grinned.

 

**

 

Striding beneath the glorious painted ceiling of the Grand Foyer, Treville snapped, “Yes, _all_ the inns in Lannion, and the posting stations, and the gong-farming carts. Then move onto Perros-Guirec and check the boats while you’re at it; I’ll authorise the man-hours.”

Silence. Treville turned. It was not Cadet Brujon at his elbow taking notes but Mlle Baudin, already hip-deep in complication, confabulation, confustication, and _fibs._ And a friend of the accused. He stared at her. The girl stared back, dark eyes serious. Hovering behind her was d’Herblay’s brother, tall and dripping with wealth and feudal privilege.

“Yes?” he asked her frostily.

The young singer caught his sleeve. “I don’t want to interrupt, but I would take any testimony from Margaret Sal with a large sprinkling of salt. She gave me poisoned tea to drink, two weeks ago.”

Treville stared at her. “That is a very grave accusation to make, at a sensitive time.”

She held her ground, small chin raised high. “It is for your information. I still do not know if she understood what was in the tea she carried. But it happened and I do not trust her.”

“How very convenient, to tell me now that she is a witness to a crime.”

Mlle Baudin’s nostrils flared. “The proof was gone, by the time I was well enough to come back to the Opera House. Do you think, if I had said anything then that you would have taken it as aught but a hysterical woman overreacting to a ‘prank’?” Her voice bit: “Or has de Garouville already told you that I make things up _for the attention?”_

“I serve the law, mademoiselle,” he said. “You could have come to me.”

“And yet,” she said levelly, “the law does not serve _me._ It would have been more than my job is worth to make a fuss.”

“But now you do.”

“Aramis is like a brother to me and he would have choked himself on his own entrails rather than hurt one of those girls.”

Treville’s jaw tightened. “I will take your information under advisement. Thank you, mademoiselle.”

The girl’s mouth twisted, but she let go of his sleeve. She and the little Comte watched him stride away.

 

**

 

Walking back through the Parisian streets, d’Artagnan said, “You didn’t mention anything about poison.”

“I’ve been distracted, alright??” Sylvie’s foot came down in a puddle, splashing her dress with muddy water and she stopped, still half in the wet, shutting her eyes and filling her lungs with air very slowly, as Athos had taught her. When she looked again, there were lamplighters moving along the cobbled streets, touching the lamps one by one with their long poles as the gaudy red of sunset shifted slowly to darkness. Still breathing carefully, she added, “I thought it was de Garouville behind it all and I didn’t want to drag the maid into the mess if I didn’t have to. But if she knew what was in the honeyed tea, and someone knew she knew, then…”

“So then -”

“I would infinitely prefer if we talk of something else for the rest of this walk,” Sylvie said, stepping out of the puddle.

“Alright,” said the Comte, offering her his arm. His eyes roamed around the cobbled street as they walked, assessing the crowds, watching the windows. After a time he said, “You were planning a walking trip through Brittany, then, to look for Aramis’ mother?”

“She was almost mine,” said Sylvie. “I don’t remember my own - Papa had a few stories - and Mama Valerious was, well, she was very proper. But Tante Joséphine? Every summer we’d roam out on the open coast and cut their track; he’d collect stories from the smallholders and I’d step into enough hugs and smiles and, and _sunshine_ to last me through a Parisian winter.” She looked at the fond, wistful smile on his face as they walked in the warm sunset light and said, “Your own Maman was, I think, a little proper.” D’Artagnan nodded uncomfortably. She patted his arm kindly. “And there are... things a growing girl needs to hear from a woman of sense.”

“Were they - lovers? Your Papa and... Aramis' mother?”

“Oh, I imagine they shared a bed once or twice,” Sylvie said comfortably. “She was a generous woman. And kind: women like her often are.” Her eyes grew distant. “She’d buy books when she could, but I think she’d fed half the beggars in Brittany by the time she was done.” The corners of her mouth drooped. “I shouldn’t have lost track when Papa died and they sent me to the Conservatory. It wasn’t just. I still remember the scent of her hair…”

“Sylvie,” d’Artagnan said cautiously, “I could look through the accounts the old factor kept for the allowance he was sending her. Maybe there’s a recent address.” She looked at him, eyes blank. “The money being sent to her? It wasn’t much but it should have paid for - the old factor said he was...” The young Comte stared at Sylvie, then his lips parted in a near-silent, _Ah…_ "The factor didn't send the money, but kept it instead?"

Sylvie ignored him, her eyes seeing nothing as she mused. “I still remember the scent of her hair.”

 

**

 

_that night, in the Perros-Guirec churchyard_

 

“Then, why did you lure me here?” Aramis asked curiously.

“I didn’t.”

Aramis watched the Phantom’s face, as well as he could. _In moonlight you see half with the eye and half with the mind,_ Porthos had said, and tonight he knew that the man with a ruined face and a heart like live coal under ash watched him back.

“Empty your pockets,” Athos said abruptly.

“Excuse me?”

“Was I unclear?”

Eyebrow cocked, Aramis pulled out his shaving kit and hussif and pocket knife and all the other collections of a gentleman who worked with his hands and laid them neatly on one of the gravestones in the moonlight. When he was done he spun gracefully, arms out as if he were dancing. Athos huffed.

“Now give me your coat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Paper planes were being experimented with in Europe by, at least avionics experimenters, in the late 19th century. (They go way back, in China and Japan.) Yes, I did check :-) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_plane#History
> 
> // _We might all of us be looking at the stars…_ \- Slight paraphrase of a line from _Lady Windermere’s Fan_ which came out in roughly the same time period.
> 
> // If I recall correctly, d'Herblay _mere's_ interest in books was a request of my lovely beta, Daisy Ninja Girl, who has good taste.


	30. Denouement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // So much of Treville’s police business is happening at the Opera House because a) it’s good to have a 'base camp’ at a complex investigation; b) (i) portions of his offices keep getting fumigated; b) (ii) his _juge d’instruction_ Jean-Armand Richelieu likes to piss him about; and c) I blew my set budget on the Opera House itself. All clear?

_Tuesday morning_

 

“I expect you’re all wondering why I called you here,” said Enrique Rochefort breezily.

It was a circle of people he addressed, sitting in a ring of chairs in the Dancer’s Salon of the Opera House, their gathering small and lonely in the great room lined with mirrors.

“That is, indeed, a thing that I was wondering,” said Louis Bourbon, his chocolate-coloured eyes very grave.

“I imagine he has an interesting story to tell,” added Phillipe-Achille Feron, amused, his long crooked fingers wrapped around the silver head of his cane.

Margaret, tired and in a dress of dove grey that made her look like a washed out photograph next to the rich oil-colours of Catherine de Garouville, said nothing, clasping a smart Morocco-leather reticule for her mistress. De Garouville adjusted the drape of a fox stole that matched her hair with a limp, graceful hand that glittered with jewels.

“This is not an official hearing,” said Commissioner Treville, stone-faced.

“What is the point, Rochefort?” asked the Comte d’Artagnan, weary and with dark circles under his eyes, but very neat. He rose suddenly from his chair, and circled behind it. “You have said nothing but slander against my brother’s name.” He grinned suddenly, wolf-like, hands resting on the back of the chair. “That is not something I shall forget.”

“Is that a threat?” The journalist turned his head to Treville and said, “Do you see the atmosphere of intimidation a man of the Fourth Estate has to work under?”

“Unless you want to continue with this slander while my brother is not present, unable to defend himself, what _is_ the point?”

“You need to understand that it is _not_ lies,” Rochefort said, his eyes blazing like blue crystal, strayed over to two women, La Bonacieux and Mme Mauricia, who sat neatly but plainly dressed with their hat-veils down amid a scattering of tenors and baritones of the cast.

“I think,” the Comte said slowly, “that you want to muddy the water, so that if he is released from this - investigation - people will always wonder, _But was it him, really? Was it? Was it him?_ You want to blacken my brother’s name past cleansing. And why? Because a pretty lady smiled at him and not you?”

Rochefort’s eyes strayed again to the two women, then back to M. Bourbon. Two high points of colour showed in his cheeks, but he continued. “You heard the man at your first meeting. You told him of the fabled Opera Ghost, did you not? The myths and the stories and the shape of the feared monster that people ran from in the dark.” M. Bourbon nodded solemnly as he thought back to the night of the gala. “As I recall,” continued Rochefort, “he responded with a story about costumed devils on stage, and another one appearing. What could be a more blatant confession that he intended to put himself in the costume of this fabled ‘Phantom’, as a masquer at le carnaval puts on the mask of a plague doctor - to make the children run so that he may feel powerful?” Bourbon’s eyes opened wide in shocked understanding.

“No,” said d’Artagnan.

Rochefort scoffed. “Why else would you tell such stories about where he comes from? Secretly you fear -”

“Aramis looks like nothing but what he is,” d’Artagnan said quietly. “My bastard brother, come to stand with me at a difficult time.” He noted with only passing interest that Bourbon’s hand had covered that of Feron where it curled over the cane, and went on: “You pick and pry and listen at doorways, and all you can do is spin stories out of it.”

“What does it matter?” asked Catherine de Garouville faintly. “Surely this distasteful conversation isn’t necessary. It interrupts our work (those of us who can endeavour to come in),” she added, glancing venomously at an empty chair where Sylvie Baudin might have sat.

“It matters,” Treville answered, his face like weathered granite.

“But why?” she asked, gentle as the trickle from a dying fountain. “When the killer has already been arrested?”

 

**

 

_last night_

 

The tiny squad of gendarmes that served Perros-Guirec found him at last in the church of Saint-Jacques. The lead officer shone a lantern into the darkened hall and found him, gazing at the altar in an attitude of nonchalance, one arm stretched along the back of a pew with his signet ring shining on a hand oddly damp as it rested in a ray of moonlight from the lobed window.

“Are you Aramis d’Herblay?” he asked belligerently.

“Do you think so?” asked the man, still staring at the altar.

Telegrams from Paris rustled in the officer’s pocket, one from Commissioner Treville, another a copy, taken from the telegraph clerk’s files, in a language that none of them understood. “You’d better come with me,” he said.

“As you like,” the other answered indifferently.

 

**

 

“We’ll come to that,” Treville said. A muscle worked in his jaw. One of the tall doors to the Grand Foyer opened a touch, and Sylvie Baudin peeked through.

“They’re ready,” the singer said.

“Bring them in, then.”

The door swung open and a line of solid working-men shuffled in after her, their wrists linked by metal manacles, their cheeks pale from lack of sun and poor food, and their sturdy forms muffled by prison weeds. They did not smell of the gaol, though - clean and freshly scrubbed - and their eyes were bound securely with soft black fabric.

One of Treville’s cadets led them, Brujon, looking half _important_ and half terrified, and curly-haired Clairmont picked up the back.

“Can you confirm,” said Porthos Nikbin at Clairmont’s side, large and reassuring, “that neither Mlle Baudin or myself have told the prisoners what is wanted of them?”

Clairmont nodded. “No, sir. Yes, sir. I mean -” The Persian clapped the cadet on the shoulder and Clairmont looked grateful. To Treville he stated, “I don’t even know what’s going on.”

“What is this farce?” hissed Rochefort. One of the prisoners turned his head, curious, and the journalist ceased speaking.

“My word,” said M. Bourbon, “this is getting as odd as an opera. Something funny, I hope.” De Garouville touched fingertips to her mouth, eyes wide. Beside her Margaret sat silent, numb.

“Friedrich Brandt,” Treville said, very clear. The man in the lead straightened. “Would you kindly walk around the room and stop if you recognise something. Anything.”

The Ruritanian nodded uncertainly.

“This is all very irregular,” de Garouville said faintly.

The chained men stepped into the echoing space, heads turning and seeking. Brandt stumbled, and a woman squeaked in alarm. Cadet Brujon stepped up and steadied his elbow; Treville beckoned to have him led to the circle of chairs. The two basses who would play Don Magnifico and Alidoro, muttering quietly to each other, fell silent as the prisoner passed, craning their heads. He paused by Bourbon and Feron, listening to the rustling as they breathed, then stepped past. Constance and Anne watched them gravely. After he had looped around the circle of chairs Brujon, on a nod from Treville, led him inside. And he stopped, uncertainly. “Is that…?” He sniffed the air. “No, but.”

“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” Anne said suddenly. Brandt’s head swung towards her.

But Treville held up one hand. “I want to know what the others do first.” But again, it was the same. Each of the chained Ruritanians, when inside the ring, stopped, looked puzzled, and stepped towards Rochefort.

“Have you seen enough?” asked Sylvie, her arms crossed. “Treville?”

Eyes giving nothing away, Treville said, “Herr Brandt, what do you recognise?”

“The smell,” Brandt said uncertainly, his French thickly accented with German. “That bitter fruitiness. It reminds me of the man who… asked us to, well, to lay hands on a woman.” Chains jingled as he reached to touch his forelock. “For which we are very sorry.”

“This means nothing!” Rochefort snapped. “A hundred men in Paris use my brand of pomade!”

Brandt nodded, as did the others. _“Ja._ That sounds like him. He kept his face hidden, but that’s him. Did you kill my brother? And Anton?”

“This is ridiculous,” snarled Rochefort, colour rising high in his cheeks. “You’d take the word of… working class _immigrants?_ Over a respectable gentleman? What does this have to do with a dead girl, anyway? Everyone knows the Opera House isn’t safe for women.” Then he turned to Anne. “Can’t you see I did all this for you?”

The veiled woman raised her hands to her mouth.

“For a concierge?” de Garouville asked derisively. “She isn’t even _pretty._ Or young. Or -”

“We aren’t done,” said Treville, stretching out his stiff leg. “Not yet.”

 

**

 

_last night_

 

The gaol of Perros-Guirec was a flimsy thing, seldom used, and the hinges of the strongroom were currently taken out for repair. It made sense, then, for the local gendarmerie to throw the notorious Phantom, the killer of women, onto the train going to Paris.

On the thundering tail of a third-class carriage, its occupants bumped up to second, a small cluster of guards peered through the window at the silent figure sitting stolid under the dim lights. “He doesn’t look like a killer,” one muttered.

“Gilles de Rais fought with Jeanne d’Arc,” said another, his wild curly hair barely contained under a duck-billed kepi. “You never know.”

“That was a put-up job,” said the first, a red-head and a native Breton. “They never found the bodies at Tiffauges.”

The second adjusted his hat and said, “There’s lots of places to hide bodies. Maybe he fed ‘em to the pigs…”

“Pfeh.”

“You want me to ask where _this_ fellow hid the bodies? Maybe _you_ can ask - I bet there’s a reward.”

The red-head shuddered slightly. “You do it. New boy does the nasty jobs.”

“Alright then, I will.” Curly adjusted his hat again - it seemed a little small for his abundant curls - and squared his shoulders. He hesitated, and then squawked as he was shoved through the door.

“Could you _be_ less discreet?” Athos muttered, staring straight ahead as Aramis sat beside him on the wooden bench.

Aramis twiched the duck-billed kepi again over his hair. “If I stayed out there much longer,” he muttered, “one of them would have noticed I’ve only a shirt under this cape.” He straightened in his seat, remembering to hold himself like young police. Something of the nature of having swallowed a lot of heated air, as he recalled. “Was this imposture strictly necessary?”

“Sylvie and Porthos play the winning hand,” Athos breathed, impassive. “I have the losing hand taken care of.”

“You, M’sieu, are no Sidney Carton.”

“‘A far, far better thing I have done…’” Athos quoted dryly. Out of sight of the guards, his cold hand gripped Aramis’ wrist. “I’ve done far worse than this: I’m not getting killed on your account.”

“Thank you,” Aramis said soberly.

 

**

 

“The death of Anton Sapt at the Gare Saint-Lazare,” said Treville, “has uncomfortable similarities in weapon with the murder of Therese Bellerose, enough that this meeting concerns both.”

“What possible reason could I have,” Rochefort blustered, “for such a terrible thing? And besides -”

It was then that one of the tall mirrors in the walls of the salon moved, the image of those looking into it bellying outwards.

A small form slipped through, young Louis Mauricia, dressed in sober colours, his russet hair wild and tousled. He led from behind the mirror two girls, Fleur and Simone, their eyes also bound.

“Where are we?” Simone said uncertainly.

“Mesdemoiselles,” Treville said with solemnity, “One of my cadets is going to steer you around this room. Would you be so kind as to make a sign if you recognise, by smell or sound, anyone you pass by?”

They stopped, both of them, close to the veiled women. “Anne,” Simone said, scenting the air.

“And Constance,” said Fleur, “you smell like after it’s been raining.”

Behind her veil Constance smiled painfully. “Get along with you.”

“Sorry, Madame,” they chorused, and dipped into deep courtesies, graceful even when blind. Anne said nothing.

But when led into the circle they turned their heads, puzzled. “Soap,” Fleur said, consideringly, “sweaty man.”

“Sorry, Mam’zelle,” said Friedrich, “it’s been a stressful morning.”

“It is nothing,” she said politely.

“Is that oranges?” asked Simone. “Kind of bitter.” She sniffed again and wrinkled her nose. “Not very subtle.” Rochefort was silent, only the derisive twist of his mouth speaking.

“Do either of you recognise the orange smell from somewhere?” Treville asked neutrally.

Simone shrugged. “Maaaaaybe?”

“Such as, when you found your friend Therese? You mentioned her body had an odd smell,” asked Treville.

“Oh no,” Fleur said at once.

“That was all different,” added Simone, “more f-flowery.”

“Even you,” said Rochefort, harsh as a carrion crow and ignoring the girls when they jumped, “even _you_ doubted my alibi, Treville?”

 

**

 

The train came huffing into the station with the sun. There was a party of Parisian gendarmes waiting, holding a still point among the crowds that moved through the great building that sheltered the trains. The metal beast stopped at last, letting out steam in a comfortable sigh.

A sailor, in civilian garb, watched them, musing, feet set on the uncertain sway of solid ground.

After a quick discussion with the conductor, the party of gendarmes moved to a third class carriage, then came out again, bewildered, with a few more. The sailor watched them, impassive.

Steam billowed as another train pulled in. Another gendarme, or at least, a man in the distinctive cape and kepi, stepped up beside him, watching the frustrated party at the train. “It’s the funniest thing,” the ‘gendarme’ said to the sailor. “One of the guards tried to give the man inside a good kicking. You know how it is, with police. If they’ve been arrested they have to be guilty, _et cetera ad infinitum.”_

The sailor turned to the ‘gendarme’, wild-haired and with a too-small hat.

“What happened then?” he asked, casually.

“He turned into a bird and flew away,” said Aramis. “Are you here to kill me, Marsac?”

“Pfeh. I’m well over that. How have you been?”

 

**

 

“The perfume was more, um, lilies,” Simone said, “very faint -”

“- I don’t know, it isn’t what she usually wore -”

“- none of us can afford the good stuff.”

“There was some jasmine in there. It smelled a bit like -” Blind and questing, Fleur scented the air again, turning about the circle.

“It smelled like what de Garouville wears.”

The famed singer gave a little shriek, half outrage and half terror. “I was nowhere near the Opera House on Sunday!!” she exclaimed.

“Or maybe Therese stole some -”

“- she likes having nice things -”

“- liked.” Fleur and Simone’s hands found each other. “The maid steals de Garouville’s perfume all the time,” Fleur explained, in the direction of Treville. “Therese might have done the same.”

“Which maid?” Treville asked, very quietly.

Their blind heads turned. “Margaret Sal.”

It was, as these things go, very circumstantial evidence. But Margaret’s nerve broke. She moved spasmodically, jerking back, and the reticule fell off her lap so that the contents scattered on the wooden floor - handkerchiefs and a vial of expensive perfume in cut crystal, a single shoe… a chain garrotte fallen out of a cloth wrapping.

Then Margaret started to run.

Porthos caught her before she reached the door, arm looped around her waist, lifting her off her feet as gently and inescapably as if she were a panicked dove in his hands. “I didn’t mean to do it,” she told him. _“He_ made me. Once you start it all goes on; I couldn’t let anyone know; _he made me.”_

Over her shoulder he could see Heinrich Brandt and the other Ruritanians grapple with Rochefort, strong even bound by iron, and the scattering outward of the circle of witnesses, the purposeful drive inwards of the police. “Sh, shh,” said Porthos to her. “I know how things go. Shh. It can stop now,” he murmured.

She collapsed in his arms, weeping, and he held her.

 

_End of Act 2_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _a man of the Fourth Estate_ \- a member of the press. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate
> 
> // _as a masquer at _le carnaval_ puts on the mask of a plague doctor_ \- France had its own tradition of pre-Lent carnivals (spreading to New Orleans, for instance), as well as Venice. You might remember the plague-doctor masks from 2.06, those monstrous beaky things that the astronomer’s henchmen were wearing. Founded from a historical biohazard suit, it’s a beautifully creepy look.
> 
> // _“I have the losing hand taken care of.”_ \- from _A Tale of Two Cities,_ by Charles Dickens. While most of Charles Darnay’s supporters are using legal and emotional appeals to get him off a crime he didn’t commit, the dodgy lawyer Sidney Carton (who looks just like him) is doing dodgy things in the shadows (later revealed to be arranging to replace Darnay in the execution queue). He refers to his actions as ‘playing the losing hand’. Fanfic: educational!
> 
> // _“The murder of Anton Sapt”_ \- good, solid, traditional Ruritanian surname: ask Anthony Hope. Anton was found strangled by a chain in 21. “At Saint Lazarus Station”.
> 
> **
> 
> I will be taking a short break to get my spoons back, before I start the last act. Just so you know.


	31. Act 3: Prologue

_“Born I am to trouble and tears,”_ Sylvie sang, _“to suffer with a silent heart.”_

The auditorium of the Paris Opera House collectively held its breath. It was a pleasant bit of froth, Rossini’s _La Cenerentola,_ a simple story simply told. The music was charming. But young Sylvie Baudin and the rest of the cast had infused their songs with an unexpected poignancy and power and as the tangled knot of deception and affection opened out, aficionados of the opera awaited with luxurious anticipation the servant girl’s final aria.

High overhead the glorious chandelier hung in blazing glory, the little candles, which took so long to light, clung together to make a joyous sun in the otherwise shadowy chamber.  
  
The young Comte d’Artagnan rested his chin on his hand, his elbow on the plush velvet railing. His companion of the evening the old manager’s young sister Mlle Lucie de Foix sat silent, her flaxen hair braided into a coronet and the diamond drops of her earrings shining like minute stars. She watched the stage also - where the producers had filled out a simply cast opera with dancers and extra chorus to bring out the spectacle that the Paris Opera Company was known for, and La Bonacieux, as the Spirit of Truth, presided over the scene in diaphanous robes with her young ‘helpers’, Fleur and Simone.  
  
Even the groundlings, those with cheap tickets in the stalls at the bottom of the auditorium held their peace from munching salted nuts or small sweet oranges, held their peace as the girl put a crown on the story.  
  
_“Now,”_ Sylvie sang with serene triumph, her white dress hung with crystal teardrops that caught every scrap of light and threw it back tenfold, _“in a lightning flash, my destiny has changed…”_

Suddenly the light on her shifted. The shadows on the stage wavered.  
  
The gorgeous chandelier hung so high above swayed.  
  
“Look!” a voice like a monstrous crow called out to the audience, rattling and echoing around the enormous chamber. “Look! She is singing to bring down the chandelier!!!”  
  
The chandelier dropped half a foot, swaying wildly and casting drunken shadows, then a foot more.  
  
Below, packed and crowded in their narrow seats, the ground-floor audience streamed and pushed, shifting like the waves of a human sea. Some of them reached the aisles and streamed out to safety. More tripped and pushed, and held themselves back in their panic as the chandelier slipped and swayed on an uncertain rope. With one last stagger above, the artificial sun crashed down.  
  
And yet, it did not shatter.  
  
A man, underneath, caught the weight of it, holding it high enough that the candles did not spill, the people around could still run.  
  
From the wings of the stage, the Chevalier d’Herblay stepped out, in evening dress, his eyes wild. “Porthos!” he shouted, to the man pitting his strength against the fallen chandelier. _“Porthos!!!”_  
  
A rifle cracked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // If you’d like an idea of what Sylvie’s singing, here’s a link to the final aria: [here](https://youtu.be/J67vh5DRURY)


	32. The Bronze Pot

**Excerpt from “The Journals of Louis Bourbon (self-published)”**  
  
_They are putting it down as ‘A Tale of Two Phantoms’, the press I mean. All except Rochefort’s main rag, Le Petit Parisien , which is standing by its ink-covered guns and claiming the man was framed. I give them a week before they start exclarifying that he was a freelancer. After that: two days will pass before they want everyone to know that he hardly wrote for them at all - the occasional thinkpiece or feature if no-one more qualified was available, that sort of little thing. Well. I won’t blame them. I myself found him so very charming and likeable, it is shivering to think how easily he picked up the mantle of a monster. You never know. _  
  
_The scandal is astounding; we’ll have a full house when La Cenerentola opens, I’m quite sure of it. (Though I had to be  quite firm  with Feron about adding fireworks to the final scene. The Paris Opera House has the finest fire marshals of the theatres in Paris and is stone beside. How can we have a spectacle if there’s nothing to spectate at, hmm?)_  
  
_We’ll be paying for the dead girl’s funeral; she didn’t have other family apparently and it looks well in the papers - I’ll take it from the advertising budget, do the thing up proper. In the meantime, I need to track down whichever joker started this ‘Phantom’ myth in the first place. The pranks are trivial enough, but disappearing money is disappearing money. It altogether makes my skin itch._  
  
_later:_  
  
_Went off to visit Philippe after the consultation with the specialist. Old  Philippe, I mean, not Feron. It’s a quiet, serene sort of place he keeps. Plenty of room. I sha’n’t fuss._  
  
  
**  
  
  
Athos dreamed.  
  
_Whatever I am…_  
  
In the confines of the long wooden box where he took himself to sleep, in the strait walls behind water, under stone, hidden in the night under earth it was just dark enough, just still enough.  
  
He dreamed again that he was sitting by a carved screen. He saw My Lady’s face through the ornamental grill in glimpses as she moved: red lipped, dark hair piled high, skin fair as her Circassian mother’s. “Tell me another story of your travels,” she ordered, childlike in her imperiousness.  
  
“I cannot,” Athos said soberly. “My spring has run dry. But perhaps...” he said carefully. (It was dream now not memory, he knew.) “Perhaps…” The fat bronze pot in the far corner began to grumble and gurgle, as if waking from a long sleep. “Perhaps our friend over there could tell us where it’s been…”  
  
Behind the screen, My Lady clapped her hands. “Do it again,” she ordered, in surprise and delight. (He knew it was a dream, for his face held the heat of the burning, the agony.)  
  
The pot yawned deeply, and said, voice clanging and resonant, _“I was not always hollow inside, you know. They took me - us - out of the earth, warm copper and sleepy tin, and we were rough and unmannerly. Then they melted us in the fire and we purified ourselves, preparing for our marriage. It was an arranged match, you understand,”_ the pot said haughtily.  
  
“Oh, you _beautiful,_ ugly man,” she said. Athos smiled. “Continue.”  
  
_Whatever I am you love me…_  
  
  
_**_  
  
  
In the doorway of a high slanted room hidden under the leads of the Opera House, Fleur stood, braced her shoulders under her short blue jacket, and marched inside.  
  
“We took on Little Louis after dance practice,” she announced to the dimness. “There’s an outing to the Grand Jetty - La Bonacieux promised to buy him an ice. And sunlight is good for growing bones, isn’t that what they always say?”  
  
The woman in the shadows continued staring at the wall, still as a piece of furniture or an ornamental vase. Only her eyes moved slightly - counting something?  
  
“There’s going to be Simone, and Simone’s older brother who works in the foundry, and La Bonacieux. Sylvie had somewhere else to be. But there’s also the Comte d’Artagnan and Aramis, and Porthos of course. Louis will be quite safe. It’s just an outing.”  
  
Silence.  
  
Fleur had always seen Mme Mauricia, older and with a son, not as an elder sibling like Sylvie or even the astonishing La Bonacieux, but as one of those foreign to her youthful experience, passed through some unseen reef to the shores of mature wisdom. Now the woman huddled under a shawl as if against the elements of a storm, her pale hair in tangled witch-locks down her back. _Therese had awful hair in the mor-_ Fleur turned rapidly away and rummaged in the foul litter on top of the tiny dresser. _Always falling out of its -_ she found a comb, built sturdily of horn - _the feel of hairpins in one’s mouth, stilling Therese with a hand on her narrow shoulder and tidying her up before she skittered off_ \- and stepped back, lifting up the ends of Mme Mauricia’s hair. The woman sat quietly, still as one resigned to drowning.  
  
“We had a talk about it,” Fleur said, “Simone and I. And we decided we were going to live and be happy. Because anything else, anything else was giving a monster who tried to turn Therese into a, a _theatre prop -”_ she paused, pulling back the wail of rage in her voice - “far more say in our lives than we could bear. So we’re going to be _happy._  
  
“If it takes a big dose of spite to be happy, that’s just the way it is.”  
  
“It isn’t always that simple,” Mme Mauricia said, wan and colourless.  
  
Fleur dug the comb into an obnoxious tangle and pulled harder than she meant. Mme Mauricia didn’t even flinch.  
  
“I know it’s not simple.” Fleur combed out another straggle. “If you need to lair up in the dark for a bit, that’s alright. It happens. But one of us is coming every day with a hot meal and a comb and a flannel so you can wash your face. That’s just the way it is.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
_Can’t you see I did all this for you?_ Rochefort’s voice, raucous as a crow, echoed in Fleur’s ears. She ignored it and, when the older woman’s hair was lying as straight as could be, returned the comb, and offered up a damp cloth and soap.  
  
The aristocratic disdain on Mme Mauricia’s face was… breathtaking.  
  
“Don’t forget behind the ears,” Fleur said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
At Saint-Lazare - half jail and half prison, a storage facility for prostitutes and criminal mothers and the simply criminal - Sylvie Baudin walked half a step behind a briskly moving nun in the low light of evening.  
  
There was a line of women exercising in the square through which they passed, prisoners serving out their short sentences. They moved slowly in a dispirited circle, girls as young as twelve mixed in with grey-haired, plump bawds. None spoke.  
  
“We decided, on balance, to keep her out of the main dormitories,” the veiled nun said clinically. “Young Mlle Sal is quiet enough in the sewing rooms, but at night…” she shrugged, and quickened her stride to a smallish two story building lined with grated windows.  
  
“It’s never too late to give up hope,” added the nun, forcing her lined face into cheeriness as they stepped into the menagerie. “I mean, I was a pétroleuse during the Commune if you can believe it. I set the Tuileries on fire! But I found God and just look at me now. No-one’s truly damned until they’re dead…” She led Sylvie up a narrow flight of stairs to the upper floor, and opened the third door along with a sensible steel key taken from her chatelaine.  
  
Inside, Sylvie crouched down beside Margaret Sal. The maid kept her arms up, her slender pale wrists crossed so that they shielded her eyes, and, though there was a bed in the cell, primly made up with a rough grey blanket and a striped bolster, huddled in the corner by an earthenware pot. The floorboards of the little cell were cold against Sylvie’s knee, even through the wool of her skirt, and in the distance, from the yard, she heard two women shriek obscenities.  
  
“I have to know,” Sylvie said, keeping her voice low and soothing. “Margaret, can you look at me?” The fair woman’s arms shifted slightly, and one eye peered through the shelter she had made of herself. “Margaret, did you know about the belladonna in the tea?”  
  
Margaret twitched.  
  
Sylvie touched her knee, the coarse grey serge of the maid’s dress rough against her fingers, the woman underneath trembling faintly. “Please,” Sylvie said, low and soothing, “it would help me to know. Do you want to help me? Can you tell me who put the poison in the pot?”  
  
“Help,” the other woman murmured, her voice ugly around the tension in her throat. “Did you ever help me?”  
  
“I -” Sylvie swallowed. “I didn’t know you were in need.”  
  
“No-one ever does. No-one ever sees me, no-one ever cares except -” She twitched again.  
  
Sylvie flattened her hand on Margaret’s knee, as she might if it were a skittish animal she was trying to soothe. “I’ll speak with Treville and ask for clemency at the trial: he might be able to manage something. They can consider the circumstances.”  
  
“Clemency. Mercy. Help. When did you help _me?_  Why would you now? So generous, to offer mercy, help, help, _help.”_  
  
With the sudden desperate strength of the enraged, Margaret shoved herself up and out, throwing her body over Sylvie who tumbled backwards. Hands at Sylvie’s throat Margaret hissed, “Why do you get to be helped by everyone, fairytale girl, why do you get to be _loved,_ why not I? I? Unloved and unlovable, why?”  
  
Choking, Sylvie hooked up one leg and, planting her foot, shoved her hips to the side, fighting to get out from under the weight. The pot kept for nightsoil tipped over and the contents spilled across the floor, pungent and rank, and then the door opened, and the old nun, old revolutionary, ran in, the wide sleeves of her habit flaring like bird wings. Margaret threw herself off and huddled again in the corner, flinching away. “No, I’m sorry,” she said, high and fast, “I didn’t mean it.”  
  
Sylvie rolled awkwardly to her hands and knees, breathing painfully through a bruised throat. The nun offered her a careful hand: “You’d better go, mam’zelle,” she said, lifting her to her feet with arms like kindly iron. Sylvie nodded jerkily, wiping with a handkerchief at the filth that had marked her shirtsleeve.  
  
“We’ll find you a place to wash up,” the nun said. “It will be fine.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // In this context ‘strait’ means ‘narrow’, as in “the strait-laced corset,” or “the strait between mainland and island.” The strait walls of the coffin are also pretty straight, though. :-)
> 
> // _They took me - us - out of the earth, warm copper and sleepy tin_ \- This owes a fair bit to one of the scenes from _Volkhavaar,_ by Tanith Lee, where Ms Lee really had _fun_ with the storytelling of magic. I’m also reminded of some of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories, where common objects just up and talked to each other.
> 
> // Saint-Lazare was a real women’s prison - I got my notes from this helpful essay: https://victorianparis.wordpress.com/tag/prisons-in-paris/ though I suspect the private cells were reserved for _good_ behaviour, not the incorrigible.
> 
> // _I was a pétroleuse during the Commune_ \- for some more notes on the Commune of Paris revolution in the 1870s, try https://victorianparis.wordpress.com/2017/03/18/the-bloodbath-of-the-paris-commune/
> 
> // Sylvie and Margaret both found this last scene quite grueling, so after we’d filmed the last take and they were back in street clothes we headed off for tea and stem-ginger cake at this nice cafe I know.


	33. The Red Carnations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll get back to Athos' bad dreams next chapter, maybe. In the meantime...

“Oh, you mean Athos,” Lucie de Foix said brightly. “My brother used to talk about him, from when they were building the Opera House. It was his father, Garnier, who designed the main building, but when the water kept coming up, and _kept_ coming up, he told off his son to design the reservoir. A strange, solemn sort of a boy...”  
  
Her hand on the Comte d’Artagnan’s arm, the pair of them walked between the giant clam shell fonts of the great church of Saint-Sulpice.  
  
“Do you remember him?” d’Artagnan asked curiously, tall and elegant in his Sunday best.  
  
“Charles, I was _five_ \- sorry, can I call you Charles? That was improper of me - I remember the pink taffeta frock my mother put away, and the tap of my new shoes on the cobbles… a youth with a crooked lip, shy and silent, who disappeared as soon as you sneezed on him? Maybe I just remember him from my brother’s stories.”  
  
“He was gone by the Commune of Paris, I think,” she said, wrinkling her brow as they waited for a trio of elegant older ladies to pass in front. “I remember the balloons on the Opera House roof,” she mused, “and eating zebras from the zoo when we ran out of food, and the rats…”  
  
“You were caught behind the barricades?” d’Artagnan asked, dark eyes crinkling.  
  
“Oh yes.” Lucie looked behind her after they had passed under the lintel of the main entrance, at the words _The French People Recognise The Supreme Being And The Immortality Of The Soul_ written there _._ They were a bare twenty years old, from a time when the building was emphatically _not_ a church but a Temple of Victory, brought willy-nilly into a faith its builders had not intended. “That was a time.” Softly she quoted:  
  
“ _If I went to the black graveyard,_  
_Brother, throw on your sister,_  
_Like a last hope,_  
_Red carnations...”_  
  
She rolled her shoulders under the puffed sleeves of her Sunday dress. “That was a time.” Breaking out into the sunlight of the street she said, more brightly, “In any case, I am at your disposal for a week, until we get my new god-daughter safely christened. I have Edouard’s diaries if that might help - _oh!”_ she exclaimed suddenly, stopping on the pavement.  
  
Constance Bonacieux stood on the other side of the forecourt in a neat blue suit and Sunday hat, blinking at them in surprise.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Under the statue of Harmony on the Opera House roof Aramis laughed merrily. “Yes, it’s a wonderful view,” he said, looking out over a Paris bathed in the light of late afternoon, warm and amber as if seen through a glass of fine tokay. “And inside over the stage, with all the ropes strung in the flies I can almost, _almost_ pretend that I’m climbing the rigging of an old windjammer, in the closeness of a still night… this is a good building for me.”  
  
“You’re a romantic, old friend,” Marsac answered easily, his fair hair tawny in the afternoon light. At a gesture from his friend, he opened up a brass case and tapped out a slender cigarette, lighting it with the end of his own.  
  
“In what sense?” asked Aramis, puffing on the fresh cigarette and letting the smoke drift from his lips. “I’m certainly French.”  
  
“Old ships and stories. You are a lover of the quaint, the picturesque, and the out-of-date.”  
  
“I don’t see the poetry in an engine,” Aramis said dryly, “I never have. Forcing its way through the wind and water…” He released more smoke and shrugged: “Sail is so much more _seductive._ The shipbuilders won’t even bother building stubby back-up masts soon and I will be very sad.”  
  
“Romantic,” Marsac repeated. He looked again over the city, its wide boulevards fit to march a column through and its ancient twisty streets. His eyes dropped, lifted, considered. “Have you made a decision yet, about the Polar Expedition?”  
  
“I’m thinking…”  
  
“There’s a little time yet.” Marsac considered his own cigarette with the fiery end burning down, and let it be. “Don’t think I ever thanked you for all that... mess with Victor,” he muttered, looking away.  
  
“I'm still not sure you’re not going to kill me over it,” Aramis replied, eyebrows quirking.  
  
“It was complicated.”  
  
“He was hurting you.”  
  
“I loved him.”  
  
“I know,” Aramis said, very low. He hesitated, then curved his hand around Marsac’s shoulder. “I _am_ sorry.”  
  
“You did what you thought best to help a friend,” Marsac said softly, “even when it was hard and you thought he might hate you for it. I respect that.”  
  
Aramis’ hand tightened on his shoulder, relaxed, stayed. “We’ve peace, then?”  
  
“Oh yes.” Marsac looked again at his cigarette and considered. “You’ll be off soon, I imagine, for supper with your Mazandarani friend?”  
  
Aramis grinned. “Coming? Porthos is a genial fellow.”  
  
Marsac smiled fondly. “Oh yes.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Why are going through here again?” M. Bourbon whined. “On a Sunday??”  
  
M. Feron’s silver-capped cane clacked on the stone of the organ-room, then lifted to strike a chime on the complicated apparatus that controlled the gas-lines of the building. “I’m trying to understand how the engine of this place works, and that’s easier without all the infernal racket.” He wheezed slightly and stopped to lean against a dingy wall covered with pinned notices and erotic pictures, his black hair loose about the shoulders of his plush bottle-green coat.  
  
M. Bourbon looked at him uneasily, edging back a little. Feron’s lips twitched when he saw, but he said, “If you’d been here this morning, we wouldn’t be intruding on your evening plans.”  
  
“I was visiting,” M. Bourbon said uneasily. “About that… it’s probably best you should know...”  
  
“Yes?” Feron said helpfully.  
  
“We’ve been together a long time…”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
“Well. It’s probably relevant to your plans…”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Sometimes things happen and -” M. Bourbon looked away. Then, “Maybe you can call me Louis,” he said in a rush. “If you like that is. You don’t have to if that would make you uncomfortable and it might confuse the staff, I don’t know, I think they prefer it if they’re shown a _firm hand_ and unimproachable authority, but if you like.”  
  
Feron blinked.  
  
He flicked out a creamy linen handkerchief, coughed into it discreetly, put it away, lifted his cane and put it down again, and huffed. Then he cocked his head and tried, “Louis?”  
  
Louis smiled, flashing his clean white teeth. “There it is.” He patted Feron’s shoulder lightly. “That’s something.” He turned on his heel and headed for the door, ignoring Feron’s frown.  
  
His footsteps faded down the hallway. Feron shook his head, and went back to comparing the great organ with his book of technical specs. He was interrupted after a time by a discreet cough: his manservant. “Found him,” the man said.  
  
“Ah!” Feron brightened. “The mystery reveals itself!” He beamed at the tall, dour man who loomed in the doorway, face obscured by a slouch hat and a scarf lapped up around his chin. “You would be Lucien Grimaud?”  
  
Grimaud nodded, his flinty eyes watching Feron as his manservant, ex-soldier, watched _him._  
  
“According to the books you’ve been taking wages for… pest control… for a good twenty years.”  
  
“Sounds about right,” the tall man said.  
  
Feron tutted mildly. “I remember what it was like after the Commune fell. Half the city hated the other half, who returned the feeling with interest… handy to have a nice quiet job with not too much fuss, I imagine.”  
  
“Old de Foix never had any complaints.” Grimaud smiled, and the scars on his face flexed oddly. “Are you asking for an accounting? I keep my records and my accounts.”  
  
“Written in blood,” the manservant muttered.  
  
“Jules,” Feron chided gently, “we’re having a civil discussion.”  
  
The scars in Grimaud’s face stretched further. “What’re we being civil about?” he enquired.  
  
“What exactly did you _do_ for de Foix, twenty years ago?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _"The French people recognize the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul"_ \- “Le Peuple Francais Reconnoit L’Etre Suprême Et L’Immortalité de L’ me’’ - placed there at the time of the Paris Commune by an unknown party, while the church was briefly a Temple of Victory. (Look, I had to research Saint-Sulpice for another story and now I have all these facts swimming in my head and one way or another, _someone is going to share my fishies._
> 
> // _If I went to the black graveyard”_ \- from a poem by Louise Michel, for her fallen friend Théophile Ferré.


	34. The Brass Samovar

Athos dreamed.  
  
It was frosty that night, on the roof of the palace. His breath condensed on the barrel of telescope, icy under his fingers. The roof, secluded as it was, was outside of the women’s quarters, and My Lady covered her hair and neck with an opaque veil of silk patterned in brilliant colours. Two harem attendants stood behind her.  
  
Silk slithered and shifted as she stepped up behind him, and he felt the warmth of her. He conceded the eyepiece and let her see her fill of the grouping of stars, the bright Pleiades and their dim, seventh sister, and the lone star Aldebaran eternally chasing after. Her oval face was impossible to read.  
  
“I’ve looked, then,” she remarked, stepping back. “What of it?”  
  
“They are beautiful,” he said, mouth suddenly dry, “The Pleiades are beautiful.”  
  
“The stars are beautiful and they are _silent._ My free night - one of my very few free nights - and here I am meditating on beautiful, _dumb_ women. Athos. I thought better of you.”  
  
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, “I only -” He’d done it wrong. He’d tried to please her and only caused hurt, somehow. He should -  
  
“What did you mean, then?”  
  
“They are beautiful and they are _free._ All the world sees them and so they look down on it. Beloved and beautiful.”  
  
She stepped towards him then, smiling, gracious and pleased. Her eunuchs waited behind her, still as furniture.  
  
“Do it again,” she told him. “Give them voices.” Even in the frosty air, her perfume was fragrant and rich: it did not please, it intoxicated.  
  
“I cannot make the stars sing for you, My Lady.”  
  
She caressed his face, the pad of her thumb tracing his upper lip. “I think you can do a _lot_ of things, my beautiful, ugly man, if I motivate you.  
  
_“Anahita,”_ he groaned.  
  
Her hands had the supple movement of aspen branches; she moved with the assurance of a young river flowing through its bed. Her breast, when she opened her robes and placed his hand upon it, felt scalding, as if sourced from the earth’s core. Her eyes twinkled merrily. “Allow me to motivate you…”  
  
  
**  
  
  
“This isn’t a good time,” Porthos told the two Frenchmen. From where he stood, in the main door of his apartment building, the late sun glinted over their shoulders and into his eyes.  
  
“If I’ve intruded,” Marsac said carefully, the tawny-haired man non-committal. Porthos watched the emotions bloom in Aramis’ face like tiny spring flowers: surprise, confusion, a touch of anxiety… The dark-haired man straightened.  
  
“It’s fine,” Porthos told him. He put one hand on his midsection and forced a smile. “I’ve just a bit of a belly-ache and it’s not a good time for company.”  
  
Aramis drew breath and Porthos cut him off, adding genially, “You’ve probably got half a dozen remedies in your pockets but it’s fine, really. I’ll sleep it off. Tomorrow, maybe.” He stepped back into the shadows of the tall building and let its concierge, a mouse-haired old bawd, shut the door.  
  
Up the stairs and through darkened corridors he walked slowly back to his rooms, and pushed on the half-open door. He crossed his sitting room with a few easy strides and twitched the gauze curtains a bare inch. Marsac and Aramis were on the other side of the street, between a narrow black carriage and a parked omnibus, looking up.  
  
“That man has revolutionary contacts.”  
  
Porthos jerked his head up.  
  
“It is my understanding,” he told his guest, who hovered, severe as a tall black raven in the corner, “that half of Paris has revolutionary contacts, and the other half is trying to forget them.”  
  
Armand-Jean Richelieu, juge d’instruction _,_ acknowledged the point with the slightest dip of his wrinkled eyelids.  
  
Summoning cheer, Porthos said, “Y’know, I might _have_ diplomatic credentials, but they aren’t more than a bit of grace-and-favour from Tariq to a retiring official. I’m more of a tourist, really.” On a side table near Richelieu he could see, tucked under his little brass samovar, the old letter from Samara’s father, which he could not bear to throw away: _Porthos, I love you like a son..._  
  
Richelieu smiled. “We have been following Governor Alaman’s recent career with great interest.”  
  
“I suspect it’s going to bore you quite soon,” Porthos answered affably. “Tariq’s a traditional kind of a man, a good church-raised boy, you might say. _Treat your superior as your father, your inferior as your son,_ that sort of thing.”  
  
“And how did he treat his superior the old Governor of Mazandaran?”  
  
“The Little Father and the Little Mother? Well you could say they weren’t good parents. A family squabble.”

“An explosive one.”

A corner of Porthos’ mouth twitched; the smile did not reach his eyes. “People tell all sorts of fanciful stories. No limit on the size of the bang in fiction, so it grows.”

“But as a servant of the law, devoted to truth and justice as I myself am,” said Richelieu, who as a prosecuting magistrate had become proverbial for personal power, “I doubt there is much of the fancy in your tale-telling.”

Porthos laughed richly. “If I knew even a _fragment_ of Tariq's formula for blasting powder, do you think there's a chance he'd just let me roam about outside Mazandaran? Now who's conjuring fancies?”

The lines in Richelieu’s face shifted around his striking beak of a nose, his fierce hawk eyes. “And if I could properly motivate you to remember it?”

“You can't draw water from a dry well,” said Porthos, “and I cannot recall what I never learned.”

“Hm.” Richelieu’s eyes flicked to the little samovar on the side table. “I do not believe you offered me something to drink.”

Porthos sighed. “Forgive me,” he said, “I did not anticipate you staying this long. I've been terribly rude.” He stood, still smiling, and waited.

Richelieu turned in a flair of dark coat skirts, and retrieved the old letter between two narrow fingers; he lifted it up curiously. Porthos - survivor of My Lady’s regime - did not twitch even an eyelash. “Such beautiful calligraphy they practice in your home. It's an art, truly.” _Porthos, I love you like a son…_

“We have many beautiful arts in my home,” Porthos said. “The mosaic domes are to die for.”

“Governor Alaman must be fond of you, to write in his own hand.”

“Tariq's well known for his knowledge of the softer skills,” Porthos agreed. “He was always much more than a simple military man.” While his ribs had stopped hurting, his tale of a belly-ache wasn't far from the truth, though he didn't care to show it in front of this man. He wondered if his servant Florian was coming back, or if he'd been a paid informant from the start. _Porthos, I love you like a son…_

Still Richelieu stood there, intruding in his house, looking at his letters. Porthos kept on smiling. _Porthos, I love you like a son,_ the letter read. _But don't come back._


	35. The Glass Harp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. Wrestling with plot can take a while.

“Marsac, what aren’t you telling me?” Aramis asked as they passed by the narrow black carriage parked by the street. The driver, a long, narrow man like a withered tree watched them impassively.  
  
“I think I interrupted a private dinner after all,” the tawny-haired man answered brightly. He winced theatrically. “I’ll make it up to you with a drink.”  
  
They turned a corner into a long avenue lined with dark cypress trees, quiet. Marsac’s feet made shadowed footprints on the snow. Aramis squinted up at the moon, full and silent, crowning herself with a ring of light cast through ice crystals. A storm would be coming. “Maybe I don’t want a drink.”  
  
“What can I give you then?” Still smiling brightly, Marsac hurried him along with a warm hand between his shoulder blades.  
  
“Are you sure you’re not here to kill me?”  
  
“I’m not here to kill you. We survived the Savoy going down: it’s an eternal bond.”  
  
A rattle of harness, a rhythmic shush of hooves on snow and and the hiss of wheels. Aramis spun around and saw the narrow black carriage coming towards them, the narrow driver watching them as he came closer. _Ankou,_ Aramis thought, then dismissed it.  
  
“What’s death anyway?” Marsac asked over his left shoulder. “You romantic. It’s just a change - is that so fearsome?”  
  
Aramis whirled but his friend was gone, only Marsac’s track of footprints dark and lonely on the snow. He turned once more, and the carriage sped away down the avenue. Aramis’ breath clouded, forming ice-crystals in the winter-struck air - he knelt carefully and touched the snake-tracks of the wheels, the scuff of the horses. He looked up and saw, in the back window, Porthos’ face looking back, his eyes tight but still forcing a smile.  
  
And then he was alone, with the snow and the trees.

Aramis opened his eyes, blinking muzzily as he stared up at the bas-relief plaster ceiling of his room in the hotel. It was eerily silent - not ever the gentle breath of other sleepers in here, though he imagined d'Artagnan was snoring happily in another part of the suite. “Where's Porthos?” he said.

 

**

 

In the roots of Athos’ basement palace, Sylvie sat on the floor with her feet tucked up and her skirts in a ruck around her. There was a low, wide, resonant box set in front of her, and on top of that, in neat array, a collection of stemmed glasses. Frowning intently, she added a few more careful drops of water to a glass in the middle and circled the rim with a damp finger.  
  
It sang: sweet and eerie.  
  
Smiling softly to herself, she unbuttoned her cuffs and rolled up her shirtsleeves, tucked a stray ringlet behind one ear, and called two and a half octaves out of the glass and water with her spread hands. Her smile grew and she experimented with scales, then fragments of tunes, a little Dvorak, a little Handel… somewhere inside Athos’ rooms, something slammed.

She moved into fragments of Chopin, clear and melancholy melodies floating over broken arpeggios, though those last made her left hand ache.

“I did not know you were coming tonight,” said Athos, clear and quiet.

Sylvie smiled to herself, a little crooked, but kept her eyes and hands on the glass harp. “I'm not an inventor,” she said, “but I thought you might like this.”

Athos’ fine hands covered her own. “No,” he said.

Sylvie looked up, swallowing back the hurt. “I only meant -” Her brows crinkled. “I found the set when I was going through Mama Valarious’ things, I thought it would be a nice surprise.” There was a faint tremor in Athos’ hands, transmitted to her own. “I always thought musical glasses sounded like the stars might, if they could sing.”

“Yes. I thought so too, once.” He continued, his voice tight, “But they're only glass and water, not the distant furnace of a sun. It's important not to get mixed up with a cheap trick.”

Sylvie flinched and he felt it, twitching himself. Athos swallowed hard.

“I'm sorry,” he said, dropping his eyes. “It's nothing you did, it's really not, it just startled me when I was sleeping and I didn't wake up… well. I think I hurt you and I'm sorry for that.”

He watched her nod, slowly, accepting the apology. But she shrank into herself, shoulders tight and mouth curving downwards as she emptied the glasses one by one into a pail. “Why did you come here tonight?”

“Ah,” the girl said, her voice wobbling outrageously. “Today was a bit… awful, and I was just looking for company. The glass harp was an excuse, really.”

Athos waited, silent, as he had waited long hours hidden in the walls, coaxing a girl near dumb with grief into speech again.

“There is a woman,” Sylvie said carefully, “who hates me. And I really don't know what to do with that.”

“What do you want?” Athos whispered. He'd forgotten his mask, getting up so fast, and his eyes were very green, in the lamplight.

“Can you just,” she said, “can you just sit beside me? And don't tell me she's wrong, or that you'll take care of it, or any, any _fixing._ Just, please, sit nearby and put your arm around me and let me feel weak and sad for a little while.”

So he did.

 

**

 

In the bare corridor of Porthos Nikbin’s hotel, the good Comte d’Artagnan stifled a yawn. His coat, at least, was decent, thrown over the nightshirt he'd hurriedly stuffed into his trousers as he followed his brother out the door of their suite in the middle of the night, but he'd forgotten a hat and his hair was disgraceful -

“Keeping tabs on me?” Porthos asked pettishly. He'd one of his brilliant dressing gowns on, its colours subdued in the low gaslight of the public corridor, but his shirt and trousers and neat shoes were still on. “Here to… comfort me tonight? So soothing, your presence, a balm...” He rubbed one of his wrists absently through the shirt cuff, then the other.

“No, I,” Aramis stuttered. “I had a bad dream, that's all, rather silly when I think about it. I would not have knocked on your door if we’d found it without a light but you're still awake I see, and -”

“Ah,” said Porthos, his face enlightened, “you were worried I'd disappeared off without telling you. What a friendly man you are. Very motivated.”

D'Artagnan stepped forward, his hand on Porthos’ chest. “You don't talk to my brother that way.”

Porthos’ eyes flicked down to the younger man's hand. Then he grinned, mirthless.

Aramis moved his brother back, gentle but inexorable. “I don't know why you're angry with me,” he said clearly. “I'm going now. Perhaps we can talk about it tomorrow.”

“Perhaps,” Porthos said, without warmth. “If I'm here.”

“Come on, Charles.” Aramis pulled his brother further away.

Porthos turned away as their footsteps faded, and spat in disgust. In the faint starlight coming through the windows his rooms were a mess: tables overturned, furniture askew, books lying open like broken-backed birds. Everything he lived with, or loved, set awry. A flicker in the corner caught his eye and, tired as he was, it took a moment to realise it was not his father, reflected in the darkened glass, but himself, haggard and old. Everything he might love: damaged or taken or used against him. It were best not to care too much.

He felt cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Singing glasses have been around in one form or another for a few centuries, but they started getting _popular_ in the 18th century, with virtuoso players and opera music composed for them. The Mad Song in _Lucia di Lammermoor_ was originally meant to be accompanied by glass harp/armonica instead of flute, for example. Benjamin Franklin then invented a version of nested glass bowls on a rotating spindle which he called an armonica or harmonica. (While a lot of my sources distinguish between ‘harp’, separate glasses on a resonating box, and ‘armonica’, on the spindle, I’ve seen discussion from actual performers where they just used ‘armonica’ for both versions. This is probably more information than you wanted. But there it is.)


	36. The Red Virgin

“And they haven't talked to each other in a week and Aramis won't say why and he just gets really, really cheerful, you know? It drives me up the wall...” D'Artagnan realised that he had been waving his arms again, elbows and hands akimbo in the narrow space of the Golden Lotus, and pulled himself in.

Constance, stirring her tea with a spoon, sat with her ankles neatly crossed in the opposite seat and smiled wryly. “Family is tough,” she remarked.

“I'll say,” d'Artagnan said with feeling. He hadn't even tried to talk it out with his brother last night, just, in the middle of a lively but one-sided discussion of ospreys, gannets, and shags, stopped Aramis with a touch to the elbow and quietly wrapped his arms around the older man. If an octopus had smelled of tobacco, he imagined that was what hugging a surprised octopus would be like. Odd, but good, he'd have to try it again the next time his brother started rattling like an untethered windmill.

“Oh!” Constance said absently, “there's Lucie again.”

D'Artagnan blinked, and looked out the window at the fair-haired woman passing briskly down the Rue Scribe.

“I was only talking to her last week,” he assured Constance hurriedly. “I thought she might know about… well.”

Constance waved one hand. “Don't worry about it,” she said. “I was just surprised to see her in church. Lucie's never had much use for that sort of thing. (Or men),” she muttered into her teacup.

“She'll be a proper marraine by now,” d’Artagnan remarked.

Constance raised one eyebrow. “Ah?”

“You were friends, then, when her brother ran the Opera House?”

“We go back away. I practically grew up there and the manager’s sister was around a lot.” Constance shrugged. “A sweet girl.”

“What of Mme Mauricia?” he asked quietly.

Constance’s brows crinkled. “We're keeping an eye on her, everyone in the corps. Half the rats think she's their Mum, anyway. We're not letting her drown.”

“I know it's women’s business,” d’Artagnan added, dropping his eyes to his own tea, “but if there's anything I can do - even if it's just a basket of food or medicine or -”

There was a warmth against his cheek suddenly - Constance’s ungloved hand. D’Artagnan held very still and let the warmth flush through his entire body. “You're very sweet,” he heard, and smiled. She pulled her hand away, tsking.

“A basket it is,” he drawled, in his most seductive tone, “filled with chocolate, fruit, and _best_ calf’s-foot jelly, my word upon it.” The wrinkle of her nose at that last made the whole of his day worthwhile.   


**

  
_ten years ago_

 

 _“I'm_ not afraid of the Ratcatcher,” said Lucie, her thin and pointy nose held high. “They say he was my brother's comrade, back in the fighting, like old Laurent who shuts the doors and Christophe in the stables. Where's the harm in that?” Her schoolgirl braids shifted as she spun suddenly and she grinned. “Coming?”

Constance’s hand tightened on a lantern which cast only a little light into the narrow underground corridors. Somewhere overhead, a scrap of song filtered down; a distant rumble of furnaces came through the floor. Her legs still trembled, her feet carried blisters from a late private lesson with La Chevreuse; she was neatly buttoned into a dancer's high jacket and short skirt, but wearing sensible half-boots. She hefted her wrapped bundle, of sandwiches and lemonade and spare candles, and grinned back.

“Wait!” Lucie stopped her friend with a light touch, and brushed a smut off her nose. “We must look our _best_ for adventuring.”

“Of course…”

 

**

 

On the Rue Scribe, Lucie adjusted a neat straw hat set with red silk carnations and held her billowing skirts against a sudden breeze. A long shadow fell across her of a sudden and she looked up, blinking, as a drift of fallen leaves scudded along the street, driven straight and fast by the wind.

She looked up and smiled.

Lieutenant Jean-René Marsac held out his arm, and she took it. “Let's get this christening underway,” she said.

Marsac smiled, crinkles showing at the corners of his eyes. “Of course...”

 

**

 

_eight years ago_

 

Lucie’s bedroom was awash in clothes, hats and new blouses and sensible skirts, to be checked for fit before being packed into trunks to be sent to her Swiss finishing school. Above the young woman's bed a large photo of Louise Michel, the red virgin of Montmartre, gazed stoically down from its frame at the two of them. Lucie picked up another dark, trumpet-shaped skirt, folded it, dropped it, picked it up again.

“You shouldn't marry Bonacieux, Connie,” Lucie said.

“I think… I think I'm pregnant,” Constance admitted.

_“Oh...”_

Lucie touched Constance’s cheek, very gently.

“So there's the end of my career,” Constance said, very bitterly, “and I don't have family to keep me, and...”

“You don't have to - I could get you a doctor, a _good_ one, not one of those butchers -”

Constance shook her head, small but definite. “I can't,” she answered, voice faint. “I thought about it and… no. And Bonacieux offered. I will _never_ be a mistress, do you understand?”

“I could look after you,” Lucie said, voice wobbling.

Constance rested her palm against the side of the girl’s face. “You're so sweet,” she said softly, drawing back.

“It's not fair,” said Lucie, eyes passionate. _“It's not fair.”_

“Phhh. Nothing's fair,” said Constance seriously. She touched Lucie’s hand. “Now, will you help me sort this mess out before you go? I want a friend beside me, when I sign my life away.”

 

**

 

In a little room beneath the Opera House, not the deepest, or the darkest, but certainly secret, M. Feron hobbled, leaning precariously on his ebony cane, to a little round table and seated himself in a high-backed, padded chair. He poured hot chocolate from a steaming carafe. “What little gathering have you brought me to, hm, Grimaud?”

“If you don't make yourself useful, if you let slip a secret, I _will_ kill you,” the scarred man said.

“No doubt, no doubt,” Feron said peacefully. He shifted in his seat, wincing, then tore the corner off a screw of paper and let powder fall hissing into the cup. He stirred the contents slowly then sipped the doctored chocolate with relief.

Grimaud’s ringed hand landed heavily on his shoulder. “Don't take too much.” Feron waved the Ratcatcher off irritably.

A little door opened, and Marsac stepped inside, ducking his head under the lintel.

“Do you have the Persian talking yet?” Grimaud asked.

“Not yet,” Marsac answered. “He's a cagey one, but I'm sure he has the formula… somewhere. Don't you worry, I'm very persuasive.”

“Your friend -”

“Aramis is _out_ of this,” said Marsac, still smiling. “Talk to him, touch him in any way, and I'm out, too. And the consequences of that wouldn't be pretty.”

“He's right,” said Lucie, following him in. “Sometimes very good friends just don't understand.” She raised one fair eyebrow at the chocolate on the table, shrugged, then sat beside Marsac, unrolling maps of Paris, of the Opera House, over the table.

She smiled winsomely.

“Shall we begin?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _“She'll be a proper marraine by now,”_ \- godmother.
> 
> // _Louise Michele, the red virgin of Montmartre_ \- a... schoolteacher, among other things... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Michel (Living in London at the time of this story, er, teaching school, among other things.)


	37. The Basin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, apologies for the villain upgrades. I'm just going to duck for cover now. 
> 
> (Chapters related to the flashback are 27 and 33, if you're interested.)

  _years ago, the North Atlantic_

 

It wasn't a storm that the _Christine Marie_ forced her way through, but the rain was heavy and the swells high as the little metal ship tended her engines and pushed through the dark water. If the ship had been a proper lady, she would have longed for an umbrella in the rainstruck night.

In a long narrow cabin, light and shadow danced wildly as the overhead light swung with the ship’s sway, over the salt-wild hair and bowed head of a youth, man-tall but slender, who sat looking at his reddened fingers.

“You need a new jacket, boy,” the man in the bunk told the youth, though he was currently down to his shirt sleeves, and those rolled up at this time.

“There's a half-inch left in the sleeve cuff, Lieutenant Amadeus,” young Aramis said peacefully. “I'll get right on that and let them out. When I have time. Sir.”

Lieutenant Amadeus - familiarly known as Victor - narrowed his eyes. “Is that cheek, d’Herblay?”

“Not at all. Sir.”

“You look a sloven on watch.”

“Yes. Sir.” Aramis dropped his head again.

“Ensign d’Herblay.”

 _“Rest,”_ Aramis said firmly. “You're not out of the woods yet, Victor.”

The big man, built heavy and bristly as a wild boar, leaned back against his pillows, one callused hand resting against his bandaged ribs, hiding the red flower of seeping blood under his broad palm. His breath rasped.

“You saved my life, d’Herblay.” His pale blue eyes glittered.

“I did my best, sir,” Aramis said shortly. An enamel basin slid slowly across the side table as the ship shifted; Aramis caught it with his wrist, then dipped bloody fingers in the water, scrubbed, and dried them with a clean cloth. “For a ‘half-trained loblolly boy’.”

“The ship’s surgeon was better.”

“He was. Lemay was kinder, too. It was a sad loss.” Aramis crossed himself and Victor smiled sardonically.

“If it weren't for you I'd be dead now.”

“Perhaps.”

“I feel I owe you a favour,” the older man rasped. “What would you like: a new uniform, being taken off double watches? You could get back your beauty sleep, Ensign Dainty.”

“You may be confusing ‘pretty’ with ‘weak’.” Aramis flashed another quick smile. “Sir.”

“Then, what?”

“Leave Marsac alone.”

“Ha! No.”

Aramis’ sloe-dark eyes flashed, but, “Why not?” he asked calmly.

“Because it is my nature, what I do with him, and I make no empty promises tonight. I am an honest man.”

“Then, transfer us off the ship, or just him at least. You can spare an ensign.”

“No,” Victor said again, his voice oddly gentle under the harshness. “For it is _his_ nature to find me, do you understand?” He watched the youth’s face. “Maybe you will when you're older.”

“I was old in the cradle,” Aramis told him and Victor laughed again, then winced, his hand curling over the wound in his ribs.

“You're tender as a new born babe, d’Herblay, whatever your skills. It is _your_ nature to tend to broken things, even me.” He grinned at the ensign, mirthless but kind. “Poor boy. I'll put you back on normal watches, then, can't say fairer than that.”

The corners of Aramis’ mouth shifted, then he opened the medicine cabinet, tapped a few careful drops of laudanum into a beaker of water, and lifted Victor’s head so that he could drink.

“Rest if you can,” he said. “Sir.”

The older Lieutenant drained it trustingly, his curled hand easing over the wound.

“Will you leave Jean-René alone?” Aramis asked again, very softly.

“No-one changes their natures,” Victor promised him, eyes sliding shut. “Take this wisdom from m...”

Aramis watched the man ease into sleep, his taut muscles relaxing, his rasping breaths easing as peace found him. The youth looked down at the snowy-white cloth in his lap. He picked it up and folded it, opened it out, refolded it, all the energy of him focussed on his hands. He looked up again, at Victor’s rugged face, so serene in sleep.

Then he picked up the folded cloth and smothered him with it.

 

**

 

_now, the Bois de Boulogne_

 

“He was right not to tell me what he'd done,” Jean-René Marsac said reflectively. “At the time. I was in a trap and did not realise though the teeth of it met in my middle. I wouldn't have understood.” The late summer sun shone tawny on his fluffy hair as he looked out over the Grand Cascade waterfall inside the Bois de Boulogne, over the pretty gardens and open-air theatres, the manicured groves where once foreign troops had quartered. He leaned his elbows on the back of the park bench and stretched out one leg.

“That is a harsh story.” At the other end of the bench Lucie de Foix sat soberly, her own fair hair stirring quietly in the breeze. “Thank you for sharing it with us.”

Between them, Porthos Nikbin buried his nose in a book of poetry and wished heartily the pair of them would go away.

“When did you find out?” Lucie asked, looking over the Persian's bowed head and oiled curls.

“Oh, earlier this year,” Marsac answered. “He said he felt as much regret as he might when putting down a rabid dog but he could see Victor's death still bothered me. And he offered to do any penance I wanted or needed, if it would give me peace.”

“A complicated man.”

“Nah,” said Marsac easily. “My friend is simple to the bone, just kind and trying to fix the world one hurt sparrow at a time.”

Porthos turned a page.

“We'll do strange and terrible things to protect our family,” Marsac mused.

“I'll take care not to step between Aramis and Charles, then,” Porthos said quietly, gazing steadfast at a line of fluid poetry.

“That pampered rich boy is not his family,” Marsac snapped. _“I_ am. Mlle Baudin is. D’Artagnan is nice enough in his way, but he's keeping a good man like a… pet, pleasant to have around right now but easy to kick off when he wants a _respectable marriage_ and suddenly the charm isn't worth the scandal.”

“And what am I?” muttered Porthos, eyes still on the book in his hands.

“A friend, I think,” Marsac said consideringly. “Maybe someone he loves, in time.”

“Maybe you should leave his name out of it,” said Porthos, the faintest of growls running under his voice.

“Done,” Marsac said instantly. “I'm already trying to kick him out of town. He'd break his heart on broken birds when what's needed is… stronger measures.”

“I'm trying,” Porthos said, _“TO READ!”_

In the silence that followed, the Grand Cascade trickled quietly into its basin of still water.

“M. Nikbin,” Lucie said quietly, “there are people in this city who are starving, and they cannot even meet to _talk_ about that without being shot at. Every time we try to pass a law to set up relief it's throttled by men who profit off human misery; every social group is demonised by those who fear the rabble and conjure every ill and malice upon us.

“If we had a stronghold and a standing-place, if we could _make_ them pay attention to us, then, M. Nikbin, we could pass laws that were more than lip service to the public good. We've heard of what Tariq's blasting powder can do, bringing walls down as simply as Jericho. With it we could block those lovely avenues that troops of cavalry might march down, we can break walls or build them -”

“You could blow a regiment into smithereens and tiny balls of roasted meat,” Porthos said cheerfully, not lifting his eyes.

“We would hope that it wouldn't come to that,” the young woman said gravely. “With a convincing enough threat, it would not.”

“‘Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing,’” Marsac quoted. “Isn't that so? Isn't that what you knew in Mazandaran?”

“Aramis talks too much,” Porthos muttered, placing a hand on his belly.

“He doesn't talk to me about you at all,” Marsac said, “which is why I'm trying to keep him out of this conversation.”

“You've got a funny way of doing that,” muttered Porthos. He turned a page, then another, flipped to the start then shut the book, prisoning its covers between two large, gentle hands.

He smiled. In the quiet of the park a bird whistled, and the leaves of trees rustled in the light breeze. The distant music of a brass band filtered over the trickle of water.

“Alright,” Porthos said. “I'll see what I can work out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _loblolly boy_ \- a naval surgeon’s attendant, apparently named after a sickroom gruel called loblolly or burgoo that they'd be in charge of feeding patients. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-lob1.htm
> 
> // The Grand Cascade is an artificial waterfall connecting two small lakes in the Bois de Boulogne, which I cannot read about without humming the Monte Carlo song, tch. It’s had a fairly long and storied history in and of itself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bois_de_Boulogne
> 
> // I lifted the line about starving men unable to talk about being starving from Louise Michel, though I've lost the link to the exact quote. Lucie also echoes some sentiments of Louis Auguste Blanqui, president _in absentia_ (he was imprisoned throughout) of the Paris Commune. This Revolution subplot kinda went feral on me, okay? Sorry if it's depressing.
> 
> // _Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing._ \- John Stuart Mill, 1867, though similar sentiments have been expressed before and after.


	38. The Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please excuse the length. This scene *refused* to be longer, and it doesn't work thematically with the next bit. Chaper 39 should be up in a day or so.

“Come up here often?”   
  
On top of the great stone building Porthos looked out over the blurry lights of the city, the muted hubbub. The roof was empty, as far as he could tell, with only the statues of Harmony and Poetry, of Apollo and his lyre for company, their electo-painted gilt silver in the half moon. Yet, even here he was not alone. He held himself in stillness, and waited.   
  
A scratch across stone. And then a shadow tucked into a statue’s wings shifted and revealed itself lazily as a man, dark-haired and dark-coated, painted white and black in the moonlight.   
  
“Maybe one night Harmony will speak to me,” Aramis said quietly. “I am a hack of a musician, really. I can play the notes as written, but the numbers behind the tune elude me.” His face appeared at last: pale, calm.   
  
"You’re a very good hydrographer.”   
  
“Adequate.” Aramis looked down at his hands as they worked at something hidden by the stone. He smiled to himself. “You’ve been talking to sailors.”   
  
Porthos grinned. “I like sailors.”   
  
Eyes downcast, Aramis’ smile grew. “I bet you do.”   
  
Porthos chuckled. Then, “You told me once, the worst thing you’d ever done…”   
  
“Mhm?”   
  
“You walked away from your mother.”   
  
“Yes.” A match flared in Aramis’ hand as he looked up and in the warm light his eyes were clear and guileless. “She was a good woman who deserved better from the world, and me.”   
  
Porthos almost asked the question. ‘Victor Amadeus’ hovered on his tongue, but: “Maybe she wanted better for her legacy, have you thought of that?”   
  
“Many times.” The match burned down to Aramis’ fingers and he swore to himself, dropping it and shaking out his fingers. He struck another and lit a slender cigarette, and leaned over the statue’s wing joint, supple as a cat, to offer it to Porthos.   
  
Regretting it, regretting everything, Porthos reached to take it, though the brush of fingertips was like flame. He leaned himself against the gilt statue, curled in a little as if sheltering from a storm though the night was clear, and he breathed the tobacco smoke, hot and rich and bitter.   
  
“Someone’s leaning on you, I know that much,” Aramis mused behind him. “What do you need?”   
  
“I need you to go.” Porthos regretted the words immediately; behind him the Frenchman was silent.   
  
“I need you to go,” Porthos said again, forced cheer filling his voice. “I need you to go on your polar expedition and find wonderful things and name something after me, something large and grumpy in the winter.”   
  
“Something with a very small brain, more like,” Aramis muttered darkly.   
  
“That’s all I ask of you: go off and be happy.”   
  
_ “Porthos…” _ the Frenchman’s voice was ragged. Porthos ignored it, and walked to the stairs. He had a meeting tonight.


	39. The Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Any references to a coup in Mazandaran in the 1890s are fictional. Some notes at the end for the bits that weren’t entirely made up.

"... M. Nikbin, are you listening?"

Porthos blinked.

Feron, the second manager of the Opera House, leaned forward painfully in his padded chair and tapped at the chessboard on the little table between them. “It's your move,” he said amiably.

“Oh, right.” Porthos skimmed over the board, nudged a bishop along a short diagonal, and went back to gazing, musingly, around the smotheringly warm little office. He heard the click of Feron taking a piece and then a soft _Hmmm._

“What was it like, at the end?” Feron asked curiously. His hand hovered over the pieces, shifted, moved back. The full sleeve of his brocade smoking jacket swayed over the delicate pieces.

“It was a coup, not a rebellion,” Porthos said drily. “It makes a difference.”

 

_**_

 

_a year ago, Mazandaran, the governor's palace_

 

They breached the walls easily, Tariq's men. A few insiders with small vials of his special formula hidden in the hems of their sleeves had placed themselves strategically. Tariq was an experienced general and he had been trusted by the Governor once: he knew the weak points of the building. In the eerie stillness of predawn, when the little birds screamed and one could see shape but not colour, when the rhythm of night and day paused on the cusp and the most vigilant of watchmen strived to shake off the soft blanket of drowsiness, Porthos watched as a portion of the wall simply… dissolved.  
  
(In his memory it was silent. In his dreams there was no impertinence of fire and smoke, though his ears remembered to ring, afterwards. It was only, in one breath, that solid stone existed; in another it did not.)  
  
There was fighting inside the walls, hot and bloody but brief, then Tariq signalled two-thirds of his force to secure the rim of the building while his chosen men sought the head of government, swift as an eagle diving for the neck of a wolf.  
  
Now they paced silently through empty corridors, brilliant with mosaic, past a hall where three hundred women might sit and hear music or poetry, stepping over an overset basket of spilled fabric. Porthos’ Martini-Henry rifle had jammed, half an hour ago, and he had discarded it for a drawn sword.

 _Oop, oop._  
  
In the anteroom to the inner chambers, Porthos whirled, lifting his curved shamshir, at the distinctive resonant call of a hoopoe bird. But it was only an automaton, brass legs spraddle-legged and one white-and-black barred wing set awry as it leaned precariously against the wall. Its rose-coloured head turned and its eyes blinked and seemed to follow him.  
  
_Oop, oop. Oop, oop._  
  
He wrinkled his nose: its maker had scented it like a hoopoe, also. A sudden weight on his shoulder and Porthos almost gutted Tariq before letting his arm drop with a ragged breath.  
  
Tariq squeezed his shoulder, dark eyes kind, as the rest of their men gathered around them. “Easy, son,” he said. “We’re almost there.” Between two wall-friezes of a poor dervish kneeling in front of a princess, and a jewelled sheikh wandering among pigs, a low dark doorway beckoned. My Lady would be inside somewhere, at the centre, with her lord husband.  
  
_Oop oop._

 

**

 

“Do you play?” Porthos asked, nodding at an old violin hung on the wall, next to a row of music boxes on a shelf, the amber wood of its belly burnished gold in the firelight.  

“Not any more,” the manager remarked. His hand, large, long-fingered, sensitive, shifted on the table painfully, made stiff by the swollen joints in his fingers. “The discomfort… my body fights me from the inside out, most frustrating.” Then his mobile mouth curved into a smile.”What luck to run an opera company now: I can comfort myself with numerous Terpsichorean delights.”

Porthos nodded slightly, unsure what to say.

“The world closes in,” Feron said softly, looking at nothing. “It becomes a list of gardens one cannot reach to walk in, instruments one cannot play, an increasing array of accommodations to be made merely to function throughout the day...” Feron clicked his tongue. “And night is coming.” He looked up again and smiled. “Still, there are little joys. Chess, good company...” His valet came in, silent, with a steaming silver carafe on a tray. “Chocolate. My one big vice,” he confided, eyes twinkling. “Will you join me?”

Porthos accepted, cradling the little silver cup in one large hand, and shifted a pawn with the other. Feron looked at him with wounded eyes and he grinned. “Sorry.”

 

**

  
  
Still there were no guards, though the rooms themselves fought them. Porthos ducked as another spinning blade shot overhead - like a penitent he shuffled along the corridor, until he heard music, of a sort, a violin tuned in the _charnoor_ mode, playing riffs of melody accompanied by a light, staccato tambour. But it was _wrong,_ too loud, too rapid, nothing of humanity in the attempts at vibrato. A click, a soft whirr, and the melody began again, frenzied and hollow. He turned a corner and saw a large wooden case, its glass windows revealing cogs and wheels, levers and shaking weights that attacked the violin pinioned inside. It was none of Athos’ work, he thought, the taciturn inventor wouldn't deign to pass something this clumsy out of his workshop. Tariq reached past him and stopped the music, and Porthos saw, under the man’s hand, the mother-of-pearl inlay on the violin - it had been an old friend’s, once.  

 

**

 

“Is that where you found your ‘My Lady’?” Feron asked, tasting the words with comfortable amusement.

Porthos smiled. “We all have our ways of giving respect.”

“That we do.” The older man's eyes slid, unaccountably, to the music boxes on the shelf.

“My Lady was a slave once,” Porthos said reflectively. “Might technically have remained so, I don't recall - certainly she did not spring from a noble house. Maybe I saw her,” he mused, “or dreamed I saw her once: a little bit of a thing sold on the public block for knockdown prices, eyes like storm with the fury of it.”

“Maybe you did.”

He sipped more of the cloyingly sweet chocolate, then said suddenly, “My mother was _nothing_ like her. _She_ was good and kind to the bone.”

“Hmm?”

“She never told me,” he told Feron softly. “Not of the land she first saw the sun, not of the journey. As if her life began when my father married her properly… what of that, Feron?”

“My mother was only a commoner,” Feron said mildly, “I really could not say.”

 

**

  
They gathered in dimness, in a group around the great cloth-covered table in the centre of the deep-buried room. One of Tariq’s men took a fistful of the canvas and pulled. “Don’t!” Porthos snapped.  
  
He’d heard Athos describe the plans to this, on a late summer night in his walled garden, where sweet smoke hung around them discouraging gnats and the sombre Frenchman was almost merry: to bring the sunlight down to this underground chamber by a system of hidden mirrors.  
  
Porthos covered his eyes with his free hand as the room brightened outrageously and light shone on the great circular mirror below them like the sun on a clear, round lake. He looked away and peeked cautiously through his fingers - the other men would recover their sight from the sudden glare in a little while, but until then he needed to be their eyes.  
  
There was a line of couches around the room, three of them occupied. He paced lightly to one. There was a girl on it, he didn’t recognise who, leaning back against the cushions as if she had been sitting quite still and patiently for a long time, and then despite herself fallen asleep. Porthos’ hand strayed almost to her silk-clad shoulder, to the stain of black at the corners of her mouth, then withdrew. A little book, long called by gravity, at last slipped from her fingers to land on the carpeted floor and he flinched back. One of the soldiers shifted uneasily.  
  
_Whirr, thwip._  
  
The soldier collapsed with a soft gasp to the floor, a tiny bolt in his throat, and Porthos whirled, shamshir in hand, for the shooter. But it had only been a little bird automaton mounted on the wall, its little golden mouth wide open for singing. The click of gears that followed was near silent. As he watched, the automaton’s throat swelled as if it were trying to swallow, and one eye winked. “Careful,” he said, unnecessarily. Squinting, Tariq pulled aside the rich carpet under his fallen man’s feet to show the trigger mechanism lost under the jewel-coloured wool.

Porthos signalled them to wait quietly, as he prowled around the room. Athos had never shown him the plans to this place, but he knew the man’s design: there would be a safety switch… somewhere.

Squinting in the unaccustomed brightness, he approached the second figure, and met the glossy black eyes of the Governor, nested in the wrinkled face of a clever, wise little man, perched on the divan with a writing tablet laid on his knees.

He'd been sitting watching, all this time.

Porthos lowered his sword, and made a brief, awkward genuflection. He swallowed and moistened his lips.

The Governor clicked. His hand lifted with a graceful arch, dipped a pen in ink. He blinked. His hand dropped and with beautiful, graceful, soulless calligraphy began to write, _In my Name, and for the Good of the State, the Bearer…_

Flinching, Porthos stopped the automaton’s hand, though the hidden weights and gears fought him. His eyes skipped to the third occupied divan, where My Lady reclined in an indolent drape, veiled only with the musky, night-black glory of her hair. Her storm-green eyes stared at him unseeing.

 

**

 

“We never found out who cut her throat,” Porthos said soberly. “Most of the inhabitants of the hidden quarters had fled, and the rest claimed to know nothing.” He pursed his lips. “We never found the Governor’s remains, either, just a copy in clockwork.”

“And that's what happened,” Feron mused.

“That's what happened. Sometimes, the end of a journey… isn't as fulfilling as a man might expect.”

“Do you think it will last?”

“I know Tariq plans to keep paying the province's taxes to the Shah. I know that Tariq is a good man. And I know that he will _try_ to be a good ruler. Whether he shall succeed...” Porthos shrugged. "As to why I'm here..."

Feron's lined, clever face brightened. "Ah, yes -" 

The door to Feron’s office slammed open. They both froze, Porthos’ hand near a small pistol in his pocket.

But it was only M. Bourbon, chocolate-dark eyes alight with glorious purpose.

“Feron!” he cried. “I have it! I can solve all our problems in one stroke!”

Feron looked at Porthos. Porthos looked at Feron.

“Can you?” asked Feron. After a moment he added, “Louis?”

“Yes!” cried the manager. “I need a safety pin!”

Somewhere in the distance, they heard a crumpled  _boom._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // The field of clockwork automation was robust in the 19th century, from little “singing bird” music boxes to more complicated puppets that could write and draw. (And there were stories and records of ones in ancient China, Greece, and the Middle East.) I based the Governor on automata built by Pierre Jaquet-Droz and Henri Maillardet in the 18th century. The automatic violin player is modelled after a Mills Violano-Virtuoso (a little before they were actually invented). There's also a reference in the epilogue of Leroux’s book, to the Phantom building things of this kind.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton  
> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/objects-of-intrigue-violano-virtuoso 
> 
> // The hoopoe: http://www.donaldnorfolk.co.uk/lifestyle/hoopoe-the-majestic-bird-of-ancient-fable-and-myth/
> 
> a recording of the _oop oop_ here: https://youtu.be/M8kRiEM2BV0
> 
> and a link to the story the first article refers to: https://persian.packhum.org/persian/main?url=pf%3Ffile%3D02602030%26ct%3D0 - The Conference of Birds.
> 
> // _Porthos’ Martini-Henry rifle had jammed_ \- “The [non-government-approved] arms trade, which had begun in the early 1880s during the Second Anglo-Afghan War... was mainly conducted by British merchants. By 1897 more than ć100,000 worth of arms and ammunition was openly imported via Būšehr, almost all of it from Britain” - http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/firearms-i-history - as Tariq was staging a coup, I figured he might have gotten some of his weapons off the books.
> 
> // _sold on the public block_ \- going by Our Friend Wikipedia, slavery in Persia was reduced after 1870, but not illegal until 1929. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Iran
> 
> You don’t have to read any of that. I swear I won’t judge.


	40. Other Members of the Company; Considering Clams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late chapter. It is, however, a long one.

By a shabby brass bed, on a high platform, ‘Don Magnifico’ stretched himself to his full height. He was a tall man with a villainous goatee, his hair covered by a tasseled nightcap and his knobby knees covered in scarlet hose under a patched night-shirt. Drawing a great breath down into the bellows of his lungs he intoned, “ _My feminine offspring, I reject you!”_  
  
Below him a young girl looked up at the _basso buffo_ , her wild brown hair twisted up into double knots on the top of her head and the hoops of a crinoline underskirt swinging wildly.

“Screw you!” she cried. “You're not my real father!”

The older singer’s eyes bulged outrageously in his lined face. _“BERTRAM!”_ he roared. _“YOUR DAUGHTER IS SASSING ME AGAIN.”_ _  
_

The other lead bass of the company looked up mildly from his place at the front of the stage, where he'd been discussing his spot in the ballet with the choreographer and Constance Bonacieux. “Be good to your ‘father’, Jeanne-dear - his constitution is weak.” Then Bertram ruffled his short hair absentmindedly and said to Constance very seriously, “But I'm not sure I'll be able to see you drop down through the wig and beard. They're… bushy.”

Constance touched his wrist. “We’ll practice the catch over and over, Bertram, until you can do it with your eyes shut. The wires will take all the weight. Don't you fret.” Simone and Fleur, flanking her, nodded solemnly.

“Ah! More practice! My weary bones...”

She poked her pink tongue out at him, as Jeanne and her ‘father’ behind them traded increasingly ridiculous insults and a stagehand pushed a broom across the boards. A door at the back of the auditorium slammed open, and Catherine de Garouville swept in, pink spots of colour in her cheeks contrasting badly with her brilliant red hair and fox fur collar.

“Ah!” said Jeanne cheerfully. “We can finally get this trio practice underway!”

“Who changed the rehearsal times??” the soprano demanded, storming down the aisle.

“The schedule change has been posted,” Jeanne said cheerfully, “for three days.”

“It was that Sylvie girl, wasn't it?” Catherine went on. “Sneaking around and messing around so her fellow singers will look bad!” Jeanne rolled her eyes. “Laugh it off, _Mademoiselle,”_ the older singer hissed. “You don't know what it's like with an underhanded witch in the same company, building her career on your own bloody shoulders -” Jeanne hid her cough behind her hand.

The music master, Lavoie, swept grandly onto the stage. Rapping his staff-like baton sharply on the wooden boards and a few notes of a piano tinkled the introduction. Renard, de Garouville, and Jeanne snapped to their places as the rest of the crowd fell silent, and ‘Don Magnifico’ began his first song, about his mysterious dream.

“For the donkey, of course!” M. Bourbon swept onto the stage, talking over his shoulder. The piano stopped mid-chord.

“Monsieur,” the grey-haired master of properties replied, hurrying after, “nobody specified a flying donkey in the production notes. And it is very late to procure something like that. Even painting a mock-up over clapboard would require time to dry. And where would it be standing?”

“Stand?” asked M. Bourbon. “No, no, it _flies.”_ He waved his arms grandly. “The whole song is about it!”

“A song about a _metaphorical_ donkey,” the master of properties said. “Monsieur! It wasn't in the production notes!”

“What are notes when it comes to genius?”

Teeth gritted, the elderly man drew himself up to his full height, which wasn't much. It was then that a large crate, placed by persons unknown on the stage, fell to pieces with a sharp crack, revealing a silver-grey figure of a donkey shrouded in wood shavings.

Jeanne walked over and touched its back cautiously, and one brilliantly pinioned wing opened out of its own accord. Everyone on stage sighed.

“Oh...” M. Bourbon breathed. “Drawing out the suspense, were you? You tease,” he told the prop master affectionately.

“Yes, quite,” the man said faintly.

Faint chuckling laughter echoed out through the auditorium, soft but omnipresent.

“It's the Ghost!” de Garouville shrieked.

“I hope he doesn't want _more_ money,” M. Bourbon sniffed. He patted his pocket, frowned, then drew out an envelope of thick, creamy stock, sealed with a flower signet. “Again?! But -” A long chain of safety pins tumbled down from the envelope, linking it by one corner to his pocket flap. _“The fiend!!”_ he shrieked.

From one of the side doors to the auditorium, d’Artagnan laughed softly. “That's the manager for you,” he told his companion.

The man beside him straightened his rusty-black, fussy coat. “Thanks, lad, I'll take it from here.” He pressed a warm silver coin into the younger man’s palm.

D’Artagnan looked down at it, sooty eyebrows quirked.

“I won't keep you further from your duties,” the bourgeois man said kindly.

D'Artagnan placed the coin fastidiously on the armrest of one of the chairs, where a cleaner might find it, and bowed, very slightly.

On the stage, a brief shriek interrupted the piano once more.

“What is it now?” Lavoie boomed like rolling thunder.

The little dancers dived into the wings and hauled out a little red-haired girl from behind the curtains, dressed shabbily but neatly in a dark dress covered with a starched pinafore.

“She's so cute -”

“- adorable -”

“- freckles, I love seeing freckles on the young ones -”

“She'll be the best dancer, I swear, I'll teach her the pirouette -”

“- don't go _en pointe_ too soon, though, that's bad for your feet -”

 _“This is not a time for fussing over tourists!”_ Lavoie roared. The girl flinched. Fleur and Simone huffed and glared at him, and the regal, portly man swelled and turned red, near to apoplexy.

Constance stepped up and touched him lightly on the wrist. “Peace,” she told him, “they lost a sister recently.”

He glared at her sideways.

She grinned slantedly. “Besides, de Garouville is still a bit flustered.”

Lavoie sighed. “Take care of it would you?” She nodded.

“Hello, Mademoiselle,” said Constance, dropping to one knee in front of the little red-haired girl, “are you here for the dance school? I'm afraid we aren't holding auditions right now, but I can show you around.”

The girl blushed pink behind her freckles and hid her hands in her starched pinafore. “Um,” she whispered, “I'm looking for my parents. I got lost in here.”

“Alright.” Constance laid a towel over the back of her sweaty neck and stood, taking the girl's cold hand. “What do they look like? What are their names?”

“Jacques-Michel Bonacieux,” she said, “and -”

“Constance!” the dancer's estranged husband roared from beside d’Artagnan. “There you are!”

Constance dropped the girl's hand and fell back a pace, her face turning white. “Luce-Marie?”

 

**

 

In a narrow corridor inside the bowels of the Opera House, Charles, Comte d’Artagnan sat quietly on a hard, narrow bench, beside Luce-Marie Bonacieux. The girl’s ankles were neatly crossed, her hands folded quietly in her lap, and she stared at the opposite wall with the stoicism of one determined not to be a bother. Her eyes moved slightly: counting the cracks, he thought: it was a game he was familiar with.  
  
Voices filtered through the thin wall: _“... we agreed that country air is better for a growing child…”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Circumstances have changed!”_  
  
“Family is tough,” he remarked.  
  
The girl’s eyes slid to the side to watch him. He looked back at her cautiously, unmoving.  
  
“Monsieur,” she asked politely, “are you Maman’s gentleman friend?”  
  
“I am a friend of your mother’s,” d’Artagnan said carefully, “and I am a gentleman. But not, I think, in the way you mean.”  
  
_“... I don’t remember that conversation, it was years ago, and you can’t expect me to hold to it...”_  
  
“I don’t know what I mean,” she answered. “It’s something Papa says she has a lot of.”  
  
D’Artagnan’s nostrils flared. “I see.” He drew in a breath, let it out. “C- Mme Bonacieux is a very kind woman, who works hard and looks after the people around her. Of course she has a lot of friends.”  
  
“She’s kind?” the girl quavered. “Then -” she broke off. “Grandmére said she quite liked her, ‘considering’, but I don’t know what ‘considering’ is. It’s a word with a lot of underneath, ‘considering’. It’s like walking on the beach looking for clams. It’s a very little pinprick of a hole in the sand ‘considering’ but there’s a whole salty, cucumbery shellfish underneath.”  
  
“Clams taste of cucumber?”  
  
“They do in Normandy,” she said seriously. “You don’t eat clams?”  
  
“I grew up in Gascony,” d’Artagnan said, “inland, where the air is so clear you can count the sheep on the next hill.”    
  
_“What are you talking about? I send you more than enough money to keep a nanny -”_  
  
_“You owe me that as my wife. The law says so. Honour says so. Or is my house really just a place to store your -”_  
  
“Grandmére is getting sick,” Luce-Marie said hurriedly. “I said I would help more, and I really don’t eat much. But Papa’s business hasn’t been going well either and - do you think she will like me?”  
  
D’Artagnan got up suddenly, then knelt on one knee before her, graceful as a knight from a romance. “Luce-Marie, I am going to tell you three things,” he said, low and warm. “Your mother is a very great artist. She loves you. And everything will be alright, I promise you that.”

“It is kind of you to say, Monsieur,” she said politely.

Like a bustling storm, M. Bourbon swept down the corridor with two burly porters in tow and rapped sharply on the door. “A word, if you please? Oh, not _you,_ by all means spend some time with your daughter. Take the afternoon off,” he said grandly. “Come along, come along.” And he swept off, with M. Bonacieux scurrying after him.

Constance stepped out after them, face very pale, blank as parchment.

“Hello again, Luce-Marie,” she said.

 

**

 

“That's my lead dancer,” Bourbon told Bonacieux flatly, in the confines of his office. “Her half-time ballet is one of the big draws in this production, which opens in a week. She'll be playing Fenella in _La Muette de Portici_ immediately afterwards _. Fenella._ It is altogether inconvenient to have my lead dancer distracted at this time.”

Bonacieux drew himself up to his full height, lanky in his respectable middle- _bourgeois_ suit, and thrust out his bearded chin. “Are you intimating that you're going to _bribe_ me, to go away?”

Bourbon laughed merrily, then stopped suddenly, seizing a white handkerchief and coughing into it. When he looked up, he tucked the handkerchief away in a crumpled wad, flicked his hand fastidiously, and beamed as if it had never happened. Smiling, he said, “No, Monsieur. I am going to _threaten_ you.” He shuffled through some papers in his desk until he found a little leather-bound book, and opened it to show a long line of addresses in neat copperplate. “These are my lawyers,” he said cheerfully, then turned a page. “And these. Your cloth business is _Bonacieux et fils,_ is it not? I'm sure I can find a trade infraction _somewhere,_ Monsieur, the laws are so complex and contradictory in this chaotic century. And when I do, Monsieur, I am going to _burn_ you. A tiny minnow like you - I shall fry you in a pan and eat you all up,” he said, popping his lips on the final ‘p’.

“This is extortion!”

“Bug swatting, merely. And now, Monsieur, you will go back to your home, you will release any claim on my lead dancer's earnings, and on her daughter, you will sign any divorce papers that are sent your way, and you will cease to bother anyone in this building.”

“Filthy rich aristo,” Bonacieux snarled.

Bourbon beamed. “You understand!” With one hand on the mercer’s shoulder blades, he ushered Bonacieux to the door, and into the hands of a pair of burly porters. He waved. “Ta ta.”

Shutting the door, he sighed, retrieved the handkerchief and stared dubiously at its contents, then tucked it back in his pocket. He settled to his desk and sorted through his mail, frowning at a little grey envelope stained with something mysterious in one corner. He opened it and found a letter from the murderous maid, what's-her-name:

 

_I, Margaret Sal, in an attempt to make peace with God, and with myself, wish to write to the managers of the Paris Opera House in confession and in warning._

_Several weeks ago, at the behest of my employer Catherine de Garouville, I carried a pot of tea poisoned with belladonna eyedrops to the dressing room of the singer Sylvie Baudin._ ~~_I thought_~~ ~~_She said it was just to scare_~~ _I knew what I was doing was wrong, and yet I did it._

 _In a moment of distress, after Mme Baudin had disappeared, I discussed this with the journalist Enrique Rochefort_ _~~I thought~~ ~~he was so kind~~_ _and he later used the threat of exposure to pressure me into doing - other criminal acts._

_I am writing to warn you that Mme de Garouville will likely try something of this nature again._

_Let me be at peace with God._

_Margaret Sal_

 

  
Bourbon looked at the letter dubiously. De Garouville was also one of his leads, her portrait on the advertising posters near as large as the titular lead. He didn't have _time_ to replace her. He flapped the paper back and forth idly. Perhaps Feron would know what to do. He yawned. He'd had a busy day. It was time for his medicine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _”My feminine offspring, I reject you!”_ \- the first line of the villain Don Magnifico’s aria, in which he chides his daughters for interrupting his dream of a flying donkey of wealth and happiness. 
> 
> Translated lyrics here: http://www.aria-database.com/search.php?individualAria=346
> 
> An unsubtitled recording here, if you’re interested: https://youtu.be/fkClE8M6E8E 
> 
> // _basso buffo_ \- a comic role sung by a bass, or a singer who specialises in same. At the time Rossini was writing a good _basso buffo_ was a huge draw and Don Magnifico gets a lot of meaty songs. (He's played here by Renard, of 2.05, who in this AU keeps his villainy strictly for acting.)
> 
> // _“Clams taste of cucumber?”_ \- all I know about clams is what some guy on Youtube trying one said. (Not big on shellfish, generally, but it was the first metaphor that came to mind.)
> 
> // In _The Mute of Portici,_ also known for the splodey volcano at the end and its ties with revolution, the title character Fenella is played by a dancer.


	41. Rain on the Roof

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait: working out some plotting issues.

It fell on the just and the unjust, striking the high roof of the Opera House like a thousand, thousand, thousand arrows from Heaven.

In the high dormitories where the little dancers slept, the knobby-kneed younglings and the skilled, fierce-eyed teenagers, Constance unrolled a thin striped mattress onto a spare bed, made it up with crisp coarse sheets and a faded blanket, then started on another.

“My boarding house doesn't accept children,” she told Luce-Marie awkwardly. “I'll find a better place for us soon,” she said, “but I thought it best to get a good night's sleep first.”

Whispering sounded from the other end of the long room, and a clink of glass.

She flashed a stern look over her shoulder and the bottle of rotgut disappeared under a flouncy sleeve. The bright eyes of the opera rats remained open, however, most openly watching the lead dancer and her small offspring. Simone, though, had one foot in Fleur’s lap and only snuck sloe-eyed glances as her friend daubed cool ointment on bloody blisters and bound it all up with clean linen.

“I don't want to be a trouble,” Luce-Marie said meekly, and, “did you sleep here when you were my age?”

“I did,” answered Constance. “My mother couldn't afford to keep me, and it beat the other options.” Reflectively, she said, “I made a lot of friends here, and I love the dance.” Her mouth quirked. “I just wanted you to have a - Well.” Behind her Simone shifted feet and held back a wince as Fleur sponged old blisters clean. “If you'd like to learn the ballet we can do that, and if there's something else I promise we can make that happen.”

“Don't send me away!”

Constance flinched. “I won't,” she said, reaching for the girl then drawing her hand back. Her mouth pursed. “Let's finish these beds then, eh?”

 

**

 

In Feron’s secure office, Porthos snapped, “You need to corn it finer. Is there any point in me showing you this esoteric technique if you're not going to pay attention?”

Marsac bristled, but Lucie kept her pestle moving smoothly around a large porcelain mortar bought from a pharmaceutical supplies shop. After a time she took a brief pinch of the red powder inside, eyed it against the white of her cotton glove and compared it against a sample on a slip of paper.

“That's too fine,” Porthos told her. She nodded courteously, her pearl earrings swinging slightly, emptied the contents into a steel waste pail, and began again, measuring the ingredients with cautious precision.

“Will you be coming to the masquerade party before the show?”

“I imagine so.”

“What will be your mask?”

“The hoopoe,” he said shortly. The ancient bird, the guide, the leader to pollution or enlightenment… symbolism was on his mind, tonight, or perhaps only that he was running out of alchemical mumbo-jumbo gleaned from his obsessive father’s old studies. He could string these two along a little further, he hoped. Feron, maybe.

Richelieu wanted another report.

The old man was… infinitely... harder to deceive and put off than these idiots, eyes deep and encompassing as a mountain hawk’s. These last few days, Porthos kept dreaming he was under a building, or a mountain, the roots of it collapsing ever-so-slowly and all the strength was gone from his legs, that he might run, only stand there with the weight increasing on his shoulders. He woke invariably gasping, the bellows of his lungs working double time and glistening with sweat, and with all that, numb as a sheet of hammered brass.

“Will we have another demonstration?” Feron asked, black eyebrows raised and dark eyes twinkling.

“There'll be weeks of curing yet,” Porthos said levelly. “If you want the full effect, that is.” He'd only a little left of Tariq's powder tucked away in secret, to eke out hidden in the dummy he was teaching them to make, to make it burn. He could put them off a little longer with it. Maybe. A little longer.

 

**

  
**_from the diaries of Sylvie Baudin, loose leaves: one stave-lined page. Recto: four voice lines an unpublished quartet in pencil: Orpheus - tenor; Eurydice - Alto; Persephone - Soprano; Hades - Bass_**

**_*_ **

Sylvie tinkered with the highest notes of the piano, thinking of the play of twigs and blossom of a weeping cherry tree in the light breezes of early spring.  
  
Athos cleared his throat. “About that last solo,” he said.  
  
The young woman leaned into the warmth of his shoulder, then snaked an arm around his waist and pounded out a grumbling bass line. “That’s Hades,” she told him, eyes twinkling.  
  
“That’s too nice to be Hades,” he answered.  
  
“How terrible,” she answered, “if the King of the Dead were unkind.”  
  
He opened his mouth and she stole a kiss from it. Athos sighed, eyes closing.

 

**

 

In the foundations of the Opera House, near the furnaces where men covered in soot fed coals to the fire night and day, there was a large, long room. It was a place for workmen, with a long, scarred table, and equipment hanging from the walls. An array of racks held a quantity of dead rats, neatly sorted into bundles bound by the tails, and at one end of the table a man with a scarred, saturnine face worked patiently at a complicated lantern.

A rustle, and a whimper, and Grimaud raised his head. “If you didn't try to run, we wouldn't have to string you up.”

He turned back to the lantern, hissed a little as a recalcitrant screw on the gas pump gave way too suddenly and licked the cut on his thumb. He glanced at the dead rats, bound by the tails for easy tallying. “I've never yet found a Rat King, not in decades,” he said. “There's probably a lesson there, for those as look to see. I can't be having with that. People looking for answers...” he grunted. “They find what they _want,_ not what is.” He adjusted the knob, nodded approvingly at the hiss of foul-smelling gas. “De Foix found me under a pile of corpses, long ago, and thought I was a martyr of the Commune.” He shrugged. “Never found a reason to tell him different: it's comfortable here. Young Lucie and what-not, they think I'm a hero.” He looked up sharply and grinned. “Want to know a secret? I'm not.”

“What are you then?” his prisoner whispered dryly.

“A man who profits from death.” He bent again to his lantern. “And who is more dangerous in the long run, I wonder?”

“You have a choice. You could let me go.”

“Nah. You're useful, a little bit. The girly, she's keeping the Phantom distracted, I like that about her. Maybe I'll let her live, when this is over.” He ignored the sudden flurry of movement. “I'm taking a lesson from that, and the journalist.” He laughed, shortly. “I don't know why they _want_ you, mind, but they do. Want you. So if anyone strays.” Grimaud shrugged. “Here you are, a nice little hanging distraction.” He struck a match on the roughness of the wooden table and lit his great lantern, shaking his fingers against the burn, and adjusted the mirror.

Squinting his eyes against the flare of light like a sun underground, Aramis, hanging by his wrists from a hook on a post, licked his lips dryly.

“You don't have to do this,” he tried again. “You could walk away.”

Grimaud picked up his lantern and walked out the door, leaving him alone in the last light of a flickering candle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _all the strength was gone from his legs_ \- a sideways reference to Porthos’ death in the book!verse.
> 
> // _“I've never yet found a Rat King…”_ \- if you don't know what this is, it’s a big white rat with a little tuft of hair on the top of its head. All very benign and no need to look it up.


	42. The Rat

_“Porthos!” Aramis cried._

_But the big man did not turn. He kept walking, shoulders square and straight, and disappeared into the little door that led to the stairs down from the roof._

_So Aramis remained, curled behind the angel’s chill wings. The world did not have the grace to rain on him._

He opened his eyes. A dream, it was just a dream.

He was here again in the dark, hanging from his wrists, the manacles a hot agony above him and the strain on his arms, his shoulders, his chest immensely wearing. It tired him even to breathe.

A voice, a workman’s gravel: “Much more of this and he'll die. We're revolutionaries, not torturers.”

Grimaud: “If he runs there's no point keeping him at all. Is your revolutionary ardour gone soft on the first bourgeois hostage you see? Keep him up, Christophe.” The men muttered, uneasy, unwilling to cross the Ratcatcher.

_Porthos’ shoulders were straight and strong as he walked away, square, Atlas might have been his name. “Porthos!” Aramis cried, but the man kept walking. If he'd said the right thing, if he'd followed -_

A time and a time later he felt the scrape of a stool, the hard top of it a support under his feet. Fresh agony sprang into his arms and shoulders as they shifted with the movement but he could breathe again, the close air of the workroom blissfully cool in his lungs. A rough, callused hand, not ungentle, held his face, as Christophe of the underground stables held a tin cup to his lips and made him drink. Aramis sucked at it greedily until he realised the bitterness in the water was opium, and tried to spit. “Drink,” ordered Christophe, the ex-soldier’s scarred face forbidding. “It'll go easier that way.”

“You could let me go,” Aramis tried again, in a dusty whisper. “This can stop.”

“No,” said Christophe.

Aramis drank.

_“You d’Herblay?” a small boy asked, a smudge of dirt on his cheek and one leg of his worn britches. His dark hair was a joyous tousle and his face ageless with persistent hunger. He might have been one of thousands, of the children who swarmed like rats in the city, scraping a living running messages or sweeping shit off the street. He looked up at Aramis, dark eyes full of worry, caution, innocence… Aramis nodded and he beckoned urgently to the mouth of a brick-lined alley. “The Persian's in trouble - he told me to get you!”_

_Aramis tossed his hat and followed the boy, squinting against the light of the setting sun. He blinked hard to adjust at the darkness between the narrow walls. “Come quick!” the boy shouted and he ran._

_His ankle caught on a cord stretched across the alley, he tumbled - a crack of blinding light and sound against his head and then darkness._

_Aramis woke a little later, tumbled inside the high walls of a cart, bundled among scuffed leather baggage that he recognised as his own. The boy, sitting beside him, made a soft noise. Aramis scrambled sickly out the back end of the cart, staggered, turned to run - he bounced off the tall, scarred man, who punched him with a fist like a piledriver. As Aramis collapsed again, he noted distantly Grimaud placing Aramis’ own hat like a shroud over his face…_

He came awake with a gasp.

At times they let him down, to doze fitfully on a pallet in the backroom, amid half a dozen other sleepers and the silent figure of someone always on watch. A pained lassitude dragged at his limbs and hounded his dreams with fever-bright visions, and too often, too soon, they strung him up again from the hook to hang like a caught fish or a tallied rat. If they had asked he would have given them anything to make it stop and the knowledge of that inner surrender dogged him in his lucid moments, a fine broth of self-hatred boiling in his belly. But they asked nothing of him.

Hung under the earth, he drowned without a sea.

 

**

 

They did not throw masquerades in Porthos’ homeland. A distant part of him noted the proceedings with interest: those who paced grandly through the festival, adorned and proud as peacocks, the ones with a sparse token of a disguise for the night. As he watched, a giggling girl in scanty, brightly-coloured silks and a gauzy scarf draped in front of her face tugged the hand of a man in green with an odd, pointy hat and a prop bow slung over his shoulder. They kissed, in front of the lined, fierce face of the juge d’instruction Richelieu, robed and caped in bloody red velvet and Commisioner Treville, stoic in tunic and blue cape of an archaic soldier. With a flicker of amusement on his lined face, Richelieu raised one hand in benediction to the couple.

Across the vast expanse of the hall that held the Grand Staircase, the young Comte d’Artagnan glared at him from behind a brief domino mask before pointedly turning away to resume talking to Constance as the young dancer held the hand of her daughter, knock-kneed and nervous in a hurriedly fitted butterfly dress. D’Artagnan blamed him for Aramis leaving so sudden, _undoubtedly,_ packed up and gone with nothing but a note for farewell. Porthos blamed himself, also, the loss of the elegant, cheerful Frenchman an ever present ache within him, dragging at his thoughts.

He thought of Samara sitting by the pool, fierce in her stillness as a young lion, and prowling on the hot sand of the steel garden, knowing the death that stalked her. Allah the Compassionate, he thought, it were better this way, with his friend safe out of it.

Sylvie, in sombre but ornate black and a high white head-dress ran tripping down the stairs, giggling, with a startled man in an executioner’s hood trailing behind, tugged by the gentle, implacable force of her small hand. His arms curled around her as they fell into a curtained alcove.

In a corner away from the flamboyant crowds, a gathering of the lesser cast and off-stage workers collected with bags of redistributed food and bottles of the _good_ wine.  
  
Giggling, Jeanne, the mezzo playing the Second Stepsister let herself be tugged into an alcove by Edmond, the Valet. Eyes bright they murmured to each other and with a flick of her fingers she produced an expensive chocolate. He kissed her instead, sweeter than the treat… Across the hall her father, Bertram, frowned at the pair but his fellow bass elbowed him in the side and he sighed, then lit Renard’s pipe for him while the other man wiped off the last of his saturnine ‘villain’ makeup from the dress rehearsal that afternoon.

Porthos even saw Mme Mauricia for the first time in weeks, her pale hair twisted into an oddly youthful style. She seemed naked here without a mask, unveiled, her white face and shadowed eyes reminiscent of a death’s head as she hesitated in a doorway, wrapped in the dark, blood red of an enormous shawl.

“Not getting cold feet, are you?” Lucie asked, stepping up beside him, her silks drifting like the elaborate drifting fins of an ornamental fish. Grimaud stepped up on the other side, smiling as reassuringly as a big man with an enormous _papier maché_ bomb labelled B O M B could.

“Not at all,” Porthos said, smiling. “You should have enough to be getting on with by the next opera.”

“ _La Muette de Portici,_ ” Lucie said smiling, “that's very appropriate. I always liked the volcano.”

“Just stay warm,” Grimaud said, “or -” he broke off as Marsac walked towards them, green hat cocked at a rakish angle over his tawny hair and a big smile on his face. “ - or things will get… interesting.” Porthos caught Mme Mauricia’s eye briefly, through the crowd, before the lady turned away.

 

**

 

_“You don't understand,” Marsac said, the young officer’s face haggard and drawn, a scattering of pale stubble on his chin. “What Lieutenant Amadeus does. I don't like it. No sane man would. But it makes us strong.”_

_Aramis wrapped himself tighter in his oilskin, face stung by the driving wind. He was tired enough to feel ill, clinging to the rail for his own unsteadiness, as well as the shove of the weather. He attempted a smile for Marsac. “I'll try to understand,” he said. The Christine Marie pushed on through the storm. The worst of it might be over soon - he turned back and spared a look at Lieutenant Amadeus, unruffled it seemed by the weather, mere wind and water but the slapping of a children's game against his calm implacability._

The boy was staring at him again, looking up with neither remorse nor mirth.

 _“Hey, kid,”_ Aramis whispered, _“may I suggest a different job?”_ After a puzzled look, he realised that he had been speaking the Breton of his childhood, and tried again in French.

The boy shrugged. “I do what my Da tells me.”

“Ah.

“Do you think we could be friends, even so? I don't want to die alone, without a friend.” The boy shrugged again, eyes wary. Aramis didn't blame him. He licked his lips, then smiled winningly. “Someone to remember me by, yes? Look, I'll be your friend right back. Would you like a treasure, just for your own? You wouldn't have to tell your Da.” The suspicion was bright in the boy's eyes. Aramis said very calmly, “Around my neck, on a cord, there's a little gold cross. It’s _very_ pretty; my mother gave it to me.” That was a lie - she'd sold everything precious she owned, one hard time or another, including herself. But he'd found one very like, as a young man, and spent three months of wages on it…

“What d’ye want in exchange, M’sieur?” asked the boy.

“Nothing.” Aramis smiled again. “She'd want another little boy to have it, that's all, someone to take it out into the sun to watch the gold and the jewels take fire...” He watched patiently as the boy produced a knife, small and sharp as a rat’s tooth, and circled around him, still wary, before pulling up a stool. He held back a cringe at the small hands fumbling at his throat, at the old cord hidden beneath his shirt, and barely stopped himself from leaning into the knife as it cut.

Once he had the cross in his hand, the boy scrambled back, away from the hanging man. The cross disappeared into his clothes, hidden away like any secret. “You're a fool, M’sieur,” the boy said, and vanished away as a crowd of rough-voiced ratcatchers returned.

 

**

 

On the platform at the centre of the Grand Staircase, d’Artagnan thought he would die of frustration.

Constance, her hair braided up into a crown, stood haughty as a queen, eyes imperious and disdainful behind the gaudy paint around her eyes. She shoved the heavy envelope of legal papers back into his hand. _“No,”_ she snapped.

“It's not even in your name,” d’Artagnan hissed. His eyes strayed briefly to where the woman’s daughter held a large plate at the refreshment table beside Little Louis, eyes round as Old Serge piled dainty after exotic dainty onto it. “It's for Luce-Marie, just a settlement, enough for good schooling if you want it or, or _anything._ I'm giving you choices, that's all, as a _gift,_ I will never ask anything back from you, do you understand, you daft woman?”

“Comte d’Artagnan,” Mme Mauricia said softly, stepping up to them, “Constance. Could I have a word?”

“No!” they snarled, in a harmony of soprano and tenor.

“And don't you call me daft,” Constance snapped. “I know better than to take -”

“It really is very important.”

“You've known me how long and you still don't trust me?” d’Artagnan asked Constance. “There's scruples and there's being a damn fool with someone else's life at stake!”

Her lips curled back in the snarl of a savage beast. She stalked away, powerful and at speed.

D’Artagnan threw up his hands, dropping the envelope, and went for the door.

Mme Mauricia knelt and picked up the dropped envelope. “I hate them all,” she said quietly.

 

**

 

 _“Toutouig la la, va mabig,”_ Aramis slurred, low and with a tune that rambled and disappeared like a badly spun thread.  
_“Toutouig la la,_  
_Da vamm a zo amañ, koantig,_  
_Ouzh da luskellat, mignonig,_  
_Toutouig la la, va mabig,_ _  
__Toutouig la la.”_

 _“Toutouig la la, va mabig,_ __  
_Toutouig la la,_ __  
_Toutouig la la, rozennig,_ __  
_Da zivjod war va c'halonig_ __  
_Toutouig la la, va mabig,_  
_Toutouig la la.”_

The men ignored him, assembling their gear for their shift and for… other work. He ignored them also, singing to himself as they filtered out, one by one, taking all light but one flickering candle. He dreamed.

_He perched on the high stone wall with the little girl beside him, her lacy kerchief freshly starched and tied over her wildly curly hair. They looked down with their backs to the nignt, at the crowd that circled the glow of the fire. Beside the flames his mother stood, straight as an aspen, graceful as a willow. Her hair, unloosed, flowed like a river of darkness. Sylvie's father, the old scholar Hubert, began to play, his fingers calling fireglow from the old fiddle. His mother began to dance: a bird, taking flight._

_"Toutouig la la, va mabig, t_ _outouig la la,_ __  
_En deiz all e ouele kalzik,_ __  
_Hag hiziv e c'hoarzh da vammig,_ __  
_Toutouig la la, va mabig,_  
_Toutouig la la.”_

A flicker of light, somewhere through the doors, distant thunder, a high eerie squeal like something dying. Aramis blinked crusty eyes.

A lightning-flash, underground.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _At times they let him down_ \- it is a terrible thing to be both writing about torture and be a pedant for detail. Research that makes your stomach turn, and the knowledge that this actually happened, to real people. *wince* So now I know that if I'd left Aramis hanging there for a week, well, he'd be dead from asphyxiation and, if not, be permanently crippled: the Manacles isn't the flashiest of torture methods, but it is definitive. So, I wrote in a bit of relief.
> 
> //This is what Sylvie was wearing: http://local-moda.blogspot.com/2013/03/traditional-headdress-of-women-of.html
> 
> // La Muette de Portici/The Mute of Portici is an opera with revolutionary themes which was also used as the signal for a revolution, can't remember the exact place right now. And! There's an exploding volcano!
> 
> // _Toutouig la la, va mabig…_ \- I got the song, with a smidge of rearranging, from here: https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es &p=67
> 
> The verses I quoted, in English:
> 
> Sleep, my little child, sleep,  
> Your mama's here, my little squirrel,  
> By your crib, my little pretty,  
> Sleep, my little child, sleep.
> 
> Sleep, my little child, sleep,  
> Sleep, my little rose,  
> Your cheek's on my little heart,  
> Sleep, my little child, sleep.
> 
> Sleep, my little child, sleep,  
> Before, she wept a lot,  
> But today, your mama laughs,  
> Sleep, my little child, sleep...


	43. The Night Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be gentle with me.

A lightning-flash, underground. Hanging in his chains, Aramis blinked crusty eyes.

 

**

 

“It's not fair,” grumbled d’Artagnan. “All I want to do is help. Why does she have to make everything so _difficult?”_ The bartender refilled his tumbler with fierce, amber whiskey and he tossed it back, letting the liquid fire slide down his throat.

“And she puts her hand on your cheek,” groused Lucie, “and she tells you you're _so sweet -"_

“She means it,” he said, flattening his hand on the sticky wood of the bar.

“She always _means_ it,” she said, tossing back her own whisky.

“And you feel so _loved -”_

“Like you're ten feet tall -”

“And then she just turns and walks off, like it's nothing -

“And throws away years of her life on some puffed-air _petit-bourgeoisie -_ ”

 _“Independent women,”_ d’Artagnan cursed.

“Why do we love them?” the young woman wailed.

 

  
**

 

Aramis let out a choked, stifled gasp as one of the running workmen jostled him in movement.

“It's the Phantom!” one of them cried, over unearthly wails that seemed pitched by a mad genius to instil innate terror in a body.

“Fire!” cried another. “We'll suffocate. Move! Get the hostage down!”

“There's no time,” ordered Christophe. He raised a pistol, so that the barrel pointed between Aramis’ eyes. The sailor stared back at him levelly. “I'm sorry,” the grizzled man said. “Sometimes it has to be like this.” He pulled the trigger, and the barrel flashed.

 

**

 

Feron dropped his crooked hand as a small night-black cat slipped up beside him from some unseen bolt hole in his  office. She made a noise like a squeaky door and rubbed the side of her face against her fingers. He clicked his tongue ruefully. “The furry vermin is back, I see.” Sighing he moved his hand and the white-whiskered cat surged up into his lap, twisting over to show her plump belly.

“It's good luck to feed a black cat,” Porthos said absently.

“Every old building has its unique superstitions and little ways,” Feron remarked. “If I said I often have an urge to… punt the little thing, just to see how far it would go…?” The cat waved one paw and he caught it, rubbing his thumb gently between its toes. “Tchah. I'm a terrible man,” he told the beast. “One day I'll eat you up.” He smacked his lips, then hesitated. “Porthos, we've enjoyed our chess games, have we not? That recipe you're peddling… you understand about the… surety, that Grimaud’s keeping down below I hope.”

The Persian frowned. “The troops he's gathering, yes. What do you think of that?”

Feron’s long mobile face softened in an odd, wry sympathy. “I think you're a fish wriggling on the hook of second thoughts.”

“My first thoughts were plenty sharp,” Porthos answered.

“Maybe you shouldn't wriggle too hard,” Feron said softly.

“Maybe you should wriggle harder,” Porthos answered, low and fierce. “Why are you in with this lot? You've never been hungry in your life; Bourbon protects you from the law. Why do you _care?”_

Feron moved, painfully, dislodging the cat to put more coal on the fire with an ornate coal scuttle, the fire burning high in the sweltering room. “Maybe I hate the world,” he said after a time.

“You don't hate me,” Porthos said, grinning.

“No,” Feron said thoughtfully, “I don't. Porthos, you -”

The door flung open.  “Feron, I'm dying,” M. Bourbon said breathlessly. “There, I said it. Oh, hello you.”

 

**

 

The barrel of the pistol flashed, creating a brief flower of light and fury, but the bullet went wide, scraping Aramis’ cheek, as a figure wrapped in black rose up behind Christophe and clipped him sharply over the head with a lead-weighted sap. He staggered, then crumpled.

The figure turned its head, stately as King Death - when the others saw its boney death's head, crowned with gold and shadowed under the cowl, already rattled by the smoke and the eerie wailing they shrieked and fled.

Aramis smiled, though his lip cracked and bled with it. “Is it time to come home?” he asked.

The figure pushed up its mask. “Yes,” said Mme Mauricia.

 

**

 

The Opera House was nearly a town, with industrial districts, restaurants, gathering places… in rooms with great tables where cloth was cut and stitchers by the dozen squinted over last minute costume changes, Constance stood on a low stool while the diaphanous veils of her dress were shifted and adjusted and, in the corner, Fleur and Simone had a screaming, drawn out fight.

Forgotten, her daughter picked up an ignored basket of mending and vanished out the great door.

Luce-Marie found a place to sit nearby, halfway up a narrow flight of wooden stairs. Thunder sounded muffled through the walls and she flinched, then ignored it with great determination, sorting through the basket as if she could block the world out with careful stitches.

With a rustle of fabric someone sat beside her, arranging layers of bright ragged skirts, and the sniff of bright clear perfume as the person moved.

“I would say that I could mend that skirt for you,” she said after a time, “but I think it's supposed to be ragged.”

“It is,” came Sylvie Baudin’s low, musical voice.

“Nothing's _real_ around here,” Luce-Marie said, trying to keep back the whine, “not even pockets.”

Mlle Baudin held up one finger, then delved inside the crimson patch pocket sewn askew on her outer skirt, and retrieved a little paper packet of lemon-and-aniseed drops. “For my throat,” she explained, offering the girl a lozenge.

With it tucked into her cheek like a squirrel's nut, Luce-Marie finished a ripped seam, wondering - dreading - if the singer would tell her that her mother had been looking for her. Then, in the inviting quiet, she yearned for it.

Instead, she said, “I don't have an ear for music, and I trip over my own feet, often as not, but I can sew. So I'm making myself useful.” She rummaged in the basket for a long white stocking, and wrapped it around the wooden bulb of a darning mushroom. Sticking out the tip of her pink tongue, she rethreaded her needle. “Besides,” she said, “Louis isn't talking to me after I told him not to make up so many stories.”

“He talks to you?”

“I can't get him to _stop.”_ Luce-Marie ran a quick line of thread through a worn patch then turning her bright needle to go the other way. “He's all on about the an- ankou that lives in the basement, and the monster that hunts rats, and the statues on the roof that talk to each other on the first of May...”

Sylvie huffed in laughter. “I've heard a lot of versions of that one.”

“Black cats are lucky and you should feed them; if you ever get lost look for the flowers and they'll take you to the sky...” Luce-Marie frowned, examining the darn, continuing to stitch. “And he _says_ there's a hanging man down there and his friend from the stables has the cross to prove it, and _I_ told him not to mix up bible stories because God hates blasphemers and then he got angry with me right back. So we're fighting.”

“I haven't heard that one,” Sylvie said thoughtfully.

A large woman with a bosom like a great ship under a ruffled black dress, adorned with a corsage on her shoulder bristling with dressmaker’s pins, appeared at the far end of the narrow, wooden corridor.

“BAUDIN!” she roared, brandishing a tape measure. “GET YOUR SKINNY ARSE BACK HERE!”

Sylvie flinched, then sprang to her feet. “I'm called,” she said reluctantly, pushing a tumbled mass of curls back over her shoulder. “Thank you for your company, I needed it.”

“NOW!!”

“But he's right about the flowers,” Sylvie called over her shoulder, trotting away.

 

**

 

Limp as a rag on the cold stone, Aramis shuddered and gasped for breath. Mme Mauricia crouched over him, covering him in the warmth of her black woollen mantle. Patting his face gently, she said hurriedly, “It's alright, it's alright, I've got you.”

“So you have,” Aramis answered weakly. He flopped one dead fish arm around, helplessly. She looked down at him, smiling slightly. He managed to bat at her face, though he could not feel it through the burning in his swollen fingers. She caught it, and held it against her cheek. “You saved me.”

“So I did,” she said softly. A crystal, shining tear welled up in one eye and splashed down warm on his cheek. Then her face crumpled and she began to cry, ugly and red-faced and sodden. Aramis gathered her in and held her as best he could as she shook and sobbed, warm and living against his body.

The eldritch wailing increased, and with a dragging, awkward tread Old Serge shuffled in, laden with a bizarre contraption of tubes, bellows, and brass horns. He reeked of spent gunpowder and of chemicals - “There's not much time!” he said, and lifted Aramis’ ankles. After a moment he and Anne shuffled around, her slender hands reaching for his shoes. As Serge slid his strong arms around Aramis’ strained shoulders his vision whited out.

He opened his eyes to a dim whitewashed room, its floor tilted and the roof and walls built slantwise. Old Serge’s grizzled face hovered over him, as the front-of-house man bathed his face with lukewarm water and Anne stood on tiptoe by a jumbled pile of gold-painted crowns and bulky, too-large papier maché bones, peering through a peephole in the wall. Serge hushed him with crooked fingers against his lips, as a thunder of feet went past, echoing through the thin wall.

“We're in a bolthole,” Anne breathed when it was quiet. “One of… my associate’s. There's water, a little food - Athos is always a belt-and-braces man,” she said wryly, “even when you can't find him. Our rescue has come to a short pause while the search dies down.”

“So we don't die ourselves,” Old Serge added, grinning.

Anne turned and retrieved a green blanket from a little locker and covered him with it. She offered him a silver flask, such as he had seen Athos drink from, on the train. It smelled of spirits and opium - he turned his face away and she waited, gravely patient, until he accepted it. 

“How did you?” Aramis whispered, after a few bare sips. “How did you know I was there?”

“A good concierge anticipates all her guest’s needs,” Anne said gravely.

“Oi,” grumbled Serge, pillowing Aramis’ head on his thigh. “Us front desk men do our part.”

Aramis slept.

 

**

 

Grimaud surveyed the wreckage of his headquarters, his lips curled in disgust. At his feet, Christophe, barely conscious, stirred feebly.

"I would have ignored you," he mused. "I would have let you keep your little lake, and your music, and your toys, if you left me and mine alone." He clicked his tongue. "So let it be war, Athos." Over his shoulder he told his lieutenant, "We're moving up plans to tomorrow night. _Keep looking_ for the sailor, I want the leverage in hand." Absentmindly, he set his booted foot on Christophe's throat and crushed it.

"Clean up this mess!"


	44. The Trap

_Mazandaran, years ago_

 

It was a beautiful garden, in Tariq's house, set in the women's quarters where strangers did not go. But Porthos Nikbin was not a stranger and he found Samara there, sitting by the pool and writing busily on her writing case.

It was a praise-poem he saw, reading over the girl’s shoulder, full of protestations of My Lady’s beauty and her chastity, her rock-candy lips and the black-scented hair with which she veiled herself, her power and far-reaching decrees and her widely vaunted _mercy..._

Porthos caught her tiny hand, enfolding it, ink-dripping pen and all, with his own. The sharp metal nib caught at his skin, a wetness dripping down his fingers.

“Don't do this,” he said softly. “This is bordering on treason. I can't know you're doing this.”

“Then don't,” Samara said tartly. “Don't read it, don't see it, don't know it.”

Angry as he was Porthos, aware of his strength, kept his hand from gripping too hard around her small bones, kept the pair of them frozen in immobility.

“You're like a brick wall,” she jibed, “motionless and dumb.”

“Walls are a protection -”

“- And a prison. Do you think while you follow all the rules anything will get _better?_ People are _dying,_ Porthos.”

“You don't have to be one of them.”

“Someone has to make a stand. Someone has to make a choice.”

And he had, hadn't he?

 

**

 

_now_

 

Porthos opened his eyes, passing a hand down his face. It was the dimness of pre-dawn, shape but no colour, and he could hear the distant screaming of the city birds over the early creaking of carts, the stirring of a waking city.

There was a man in his room, a dark profile muffled in hat and scarf against the light, a still and unmoving shadow. “Athos,” Porthos sighed, sitting up so that the sheet fell away from his body, “Come to talk at last, eh?” He picked up a towel beside him and briskly rubbed off the sweat of his hounding dreams, and shrugged into a robe. “I can't stop thinking about the rosy hours, back in Mazandaran.”

The figure said nothing.

“You'll be wanting your coffee,” he told the silent man. “I'm out. I have tea, and you will drink it.”

The brim of the hat tipped.

“After the steel garden,” Porthos said awkwardly. “After I made you live.” He padded to the tiny kitchen and returned with his samovar, and leaves, a packet of matches. “I made you live. Have you forgiven me yet?”

In the flare of a match, Grimaud pulled down the scarf and eyed Porthos coolly. “There's nothing to forgive. Yet.”

What a morning it was.

“I'm not doing this in a dressing gown,” Porthos told Grimaud, turning his back and shucking the robe as he stalked to the chair where last night's clothes sat neatly folded. He shook out his dark woollen trousers and turned with them hanging from one hand. “I trust this isn't a social call.”

“Tariq’s blasting powder,” Grimaud said. “I want it.”

“I'm giving it to you,” Porthos said, a dimple showing in his cheek as he stepped into his trousers, “good things take time. When you have learned enough, studied enough, are wise enough...”

“I understand,” Grimaud told him. “We are both men of the world; we've weathered our storms; we keep our own counsel.” He curled his scarred lips at the alchemical paraphernalia on the table, then scattered it with one strike of his rough hand, “This is bullshit. I've pandered to your little games long enough. Stop fucking around and give me the real formula.”

The door to his hallway opened quietly. Porthos didn't bother glancing at the men behind it, and the cold steel in their hands. He could take them in a fight, possibly. If he wasn't so tired. If he could see a point to anything. He reached for his shirt, shrugged into it, worked the tiny shell buttons. “Offer me my life,” he said flippantly, sitting down at the table.

Grimaud dipped the steel nib of a pen into a pot of red ink and folded it into Porthos’ large hand, where it dripped slightly, unnoticed.

“Offer me wealth, O man of the world,” Porthos said, grinning. Grimaud cuffed him, the force of it rocking him in his seat.

“Fame and fortune, I've had that. I've been paid with glory, gilt over rotten wood, and I can't say I liked it in the end. But you can offer me another golden apple if you like.” He clicked his tongue. “Oh, wait,” he said. “You're a glorious hero of the revolution, here to tell me of all the lives to be saved _in the end,_ ‘spite all the ones lost now. Isn't that so?” He bared his teeth again at Grimaud. “That's your story, isn't it? But you're no poet, you're _nothing_ like Samara bint Tariq, or her father… Whose life will you offer me, Grimaud?”

And Grimaud put a hat on the table.

It was simply made, with a discreet brim, but there was a certain elegance to it, an air that demanded it be worn with a natty tilt over well-cut hair. Porthos picked it up mutely, fingers flicking the mud off and straightening the dents. He turned it over and read the name scribed on the band: _Aramis René d’Herblay._

Forcing a smile, he said, “You've stepped up to raiding luggage. I'm _very impressed.”_

“He doesn't say your name,” Grimaud mused, “except when he's raving.” He shrugged. “Don't worry, your boy isn't so badly off, he hasn't begun to call for his mother. They always do that when they're on the brink: I never understood why.”

He looked straight at Porthos, then, and it was a long moment before Porthos realised he was waiting for an explanation.

“You don't know,” Porthos said.

“My own mother tried to drown me,” Grimaud answered. “No, I don't know.”

 

**

 

_elsewhere_

 

In dim candlelight, Aramis watched the bright spark that hovered on the tip of the knife.

“Is this really necessary?” he asked.

Mme Mauricia - now well and truly _Anne_ to him - furrowed her fair brows. “If I have to play another game of My Aunt Suzie _sotto voce_ I will scream and give us away. And you are _unkempt.”_

“Unordered.”

“Disheveled.”

“Disarmed.” He flashed his teeth in a quick smile and twitched one swollen hand.

“Misaligned.”

“Malodorous.”

“Exactly,” she said gravely, and lifted again her pocket razor. Anne's hands were sure and even in the dimness, with only cold water to soften the rank bristles on his chin and throat, she managed to neaten him up tolerably without drawing blood. And he did feel better afterwards, even trapped down in this awkward cubbyhole.

 _I'm still not your husband,_ he thought, but had the sense not to say that out loud.

A silent movement of the trapdoor in the ceiling had them frozen, Anne shifting her hand to hold the razor like a weapon, Aramis, still invalid, covering it only with his eyes.

But it was only Serge, climbing awkwardly down.

“There's good news and bad news,” he said gruffly, when they were sealed tight away again. “Ain't nobody tapping the walls for us no more, but they're still blocking all’n our exits.”

“The bad news,” Anne breathed.

“They're gonna storm the Opera House.”

 

**

 

"Marsac would _never -_ " Porthos tried, but stopped at the derisive laugh. And Feron had mentioned a surety...

“If you give me the formula, and it works,” said Grimaud, “I'll release him to you. Eventually.”

“That's no kind of bargain.”

“It's all you get.”

“If I hadn't sent him away...” Porthos shut his eyes.

“You try my patience,” Grimaud said coldly. “Make your choice.”

And Porthos did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // With regret, you aren't getting a sample of what Samara wrote - I don't have enough of a grasp of panegyrics of the era to do the form justice _and_ make it a scathing satire. However, if you're interested, “Women in Praise of Women: Female Poets and Female Patrons in Qajar Iran” by Dominic Parviz Brookshaw was an introduction for me, here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2012.740902 assuming you want to get past the paywall. 
> 
> Tldr: while rarely published outside the women's quarters, a female literary tradition did exist; praise poetry whether written by men or women often had some erotic phrasing (“I continually smell you and sneeze from your scent/I continually kiss you and drink sugar from your lips”); also, extreme statements of chastity (“She is so enveloped in chastity’s curtain, that the poet’s imagination fails to describe her...”); comparisons to historical figures both in purity and worldly power; and references to authority (“If the cry of her wrath should escape from behind the curtain/The liver of Rustam himself would melt from its heat.”) We will assume that Samara took this literary form and made it utterly scathing.


	45. Alarms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Screw the chapter count. This gets done _when it gets done._
> 
> CW: Louis, being Louis, says some hurtful things regarding congenital deformity.

_Mazandaran, many years ago_

 

Porthos had spent a lot of time at Tariq's house when he was growing up, getting away from his father's decaying apartments in the city - and the games the old man played - to Tariq's rather grander establishment. But then, Tariq was a rather grand sort of a man.

“You're strong, boy,” he had said to Porthos once, in the cool of his chemistry laboratory. Porthos was a youth at the time, peach-down on his cheeks and clumsy in his newfound height, though he could now meet the old general eye to eye and grin at him shyly. “You will be stronger yet,” Tariq said, though his voice held not praise but teaching. “And you will find, as your puissance increases, that what falls outside the strength of your arm increases also, even to the ends of the earth.”

“Are you telling me to be clever, Tariq?” Porthos asked, head high. He pointed to Tariq's workbench, where among the dog-eared engineering and physics journals from the  _Dar al-Funun_  and abroad, their tight Persian and French and English printing garlanded all over with Tariq's calligraphed notes, sat the powders and elixirs so similar to that of his own father who strove still to turn base metal into gold, to unpick the secret of life. “Shall I apply myself to study, to better myself?”

“That, also, is inside the strength of your arm.”

“I shall go to the teachers in the Mosque, then, and listen to their counsel!” young Porthos said, eyes dancing.

“To study the teachings of the Most Compassionate is always wise, my son.”

“And what else must I do?”

"Love the law: the sword we forged against wickedness; the shelter we built against the storm. Guard the weak as you would your children. Obey your superior as you would your father."

(Years later, Porthos wondered if he'd understood Tariq at all.)

"Remember that you too are mortal."

 

**

 

_Paris, now_

 

It was a two-sticks day for Feron. Despite that, he manoeuvred at speed over the slippery marble floor of the Grand Foyer. How dare he? How dare he?? __  
__  
_"I've been spending a lot of time at my brother's grave," Louis had said into the quiet of Feron's office when the Persian had gone last night. "Oh, not you, Phillipe-Achille. Other-Phillipe."_ __  
__  
_"You don't have another - another brother," Feron answered, at a loss. He rose stiffly and turned stiffly to his shelf of music boxes. He turned the key on one and a little silver bird sprang up and waggled its wings stiffly as a series of mechanical bird calls sounded from the cams inside. He started another, a golden bird this time but the pattern was the same, and the two calls beat at each other, out of time and jangling with it._ __  
__  
_"I do," Louis said softly, "I did. My twin. Phillipe-Francis was... like you, all twisted in the bone. Mother never liked him. She hid him away because she was ashamed." When Feron turned Louis was tracing a finger around the wet lip of his cut-glass tumbler, making it sing, his eyelids lowered so that his long, dark eyelashes looked traced with ink on his pale face. "He died when we were fifteen and then I met you, and -" He bit his lip. "All this time I have never married because I was terrified of what my seed would do to my children, how it might twist and stunt them in the womb. Whether they'd die young. Whether their mother would hate them."_ __  
__  
_Feron stared at him, then turned and started another music box, turning the key with his sensitive, gnarled fingers. This one was without ornament and soon the Für Elise tangled in the air._ __  
__  
_"Your favourite tune." Louis forced a smile. "Are you in pain, tonight?"_ __  
__  
_"Yes," Feron said heavily. "Yes, I am in pain."_ __  
__  
_"If you could have a son, to remember you by, would you want that?"_ __  
__  
_Feron said nothing, hands moving over the boxes, until music sounded and resounded, near lost in the twittering._ __  
__  
_"I'll be going away after Opening Night," Louis said at last. "There's a spa in Switzerland... well, they say the staff are kind, at least. In the meantime, it's a little late but -" he waved his arms - "Happy birthday, Feron. I got you another music box!"_  
  
How dare he? Tossing him the Opera House like an afterthought, a last bribe so Feron might keep Louis' name alive; glorying in his status as the golden, unblemished son; mocking Feron, that was what he was doing, mocking him... Feron had laid awake all night, fuming, and his mood was brewing lightning by morning. Dropping all this on Feron's lap the night before the show and leaving him, practical, clever, dutiful Feron, to tie up all the last bits and pieces while Louis went off, all maudlin, to a graveyard - how dare he???

A burly blond man, well-scrubbed, caught at his sleeve, talking rapidly in a thick, German accent, nattering about _staff,_ of all things - “If she doesn't want to talk I'd a message for Old Serge to take to her, but I can't find him -”

“If Serge Berger is not at his post this day,” Feron said, tasting the words with relish, “I shall _eat_ him. I will roast his flesh and grind his liver for paté. I will crack his bones and suck down the _marrow._ I shall -”

Friedrich Brandt of Ruritania fell back a step, muttering a quick apology.

Feron swept on, then cursed as one cane slipped on the floor, almost sending him sprawling before he caught himself painfully on a door frame. He summoned one of the young pages and sent him down to Grimaud’s rooms, to see what the Ratcatcher was about.  
_  
_ Then he backed through a velvet curtain into a quiet dim alcove, laid his canes to one side, and he hid his long face in his hands and he wept.

 

**

 

Later Porthos would remember that day as eerily quiet: the Parisian crowds, the jumble of Opera-goers, those high in estate and low, men in high stiff hats and women with their shoulders bared and their faces layered with thick, white powder, he remembered them as a colourful horde, but after could recall no sound but a blur, distorted as by a head plunged underwater or the twisting of a fever-dream.

It was with the brightness of a fever that other snippets of memory came back to him: an omnibus’s loaded wheels splashing through puddled water on a crowded street; the squint of sun through cloud and the pungent smell of a barrowman’s donkey evacuating as he walked by; the _judge d’instruction_ Richelieu sweeping through the Subscribers’ Entrance ahead of a cluster of notables, one could almost see robes of state about him magnificent as a vizier; Sylvie and Constance in deep conversation on the Grand Staircase, their hands resting on the shoulders of Little Louis and a red-headed girl - they would have called to him but he saw again Grimaud’s man shadowing him and so Porthos turned deliberately away from the women and children.

He refrained from the boxes tonight, and kept to the ground-floor stalls - far from the worst seats, but away from the gentry. He knew nobody nearby, was forbidding enough to discourage conversation from strangers. There was a painful lightness to his hip, where a simple silver hip flask was no longer in his pocket. He'd carried it a long time, that powder, hidden in plain sight. And whatever happened, he would be there when the Opera House fell. A witness, perhaps, or a casualty. But he would be there at the end.

 

**

 

“Look! She is singing to bring down the chandelier!!!” a voice cried, raucous as a crow.

“Is it the Phantom?” Lucie asked, eyes as bright as the diamond drops that swung in her ears.

“I don't think so,” d’Artagnan breathed, gripping the plush-velvet balcony rail with taut hands and risking a glance away from the extravagant, swaying chandelier to peer suspiciously at dark, forbidding Box 5. “It doesn't seem his style.”

“I suppose not,” she said calmly, retrieving a dull, efficient pistol from her sequined reticule. “Athos was always shy. I'd duck if I were you.”

Young and impetuous he might be, yet d’Artagnan was not a fool. He dropped, keeping his head below the rail.

Across the auditorium, Marsac worked the bolt of his _Berthier_ rifle and lifted the stock to his shoulder. He breathed in and breathed out, found his target, squeezed the trigger: his bullet found the secret cache of blasting powder secreted on the outer side of Box 5.

Quickly, without any fuss, Box 5 - and Boxes 4 and 6 besides - puffed into nothingness.

He reloaded the rifle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _the dog-eared academic journals from the Dar al-Funun and abroad_ \- the Dar al-Funun was a western-style* academy founded by Amir Kabir in 1851, which taught medicine, engineering, military science, and geology, and eventually merged into the University of Tehran:  
>  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dar_ul-Funun_(Persia)
> 
> (* before the Dar al-Funun, Persian institutes of higher learning go back a reeeeeeeally long way: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Gondishapur  
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nezamiyeh  
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_Iran)
> 
> // _how dare he???_ \- I achieved another Triple Punctuation! (I'm very proud.)
> 
> // The Für Elise, by Beethoven, is not actually Feron’s favourite tune, it's just that every time his birthday comes around Louis vaguely remembers something about it and music boxes - or singing bird boxes - and acts accordingly. Music boxes with bird automata were popular in Europe around this time. Here's a link to one of the bird song ones - https://youtu.be/Xw_pzp8LkAs - it's close enough to weird out my cats.


	46. Excursions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very sorry for the delay. I was afflicted by a terrible combination of writer's block and having to get something else finished for an exchange. I hope you enjoy.

_“... to suffer with a silent heart,”_ Sylvie sang. Her left shoe pinched; the crystal-studded dress, damp under the arms, had been laced too tight by a hurried, inexperienced dresser; one of the star pins adorning her hair was slipping. Grounding her feet, she breathed in air and sang out fire.   
  
_“Now, in a lightning flash, my destiny has changed…”_

She could not see Athos against the glare of the stagelights, the hushed multitude behind them - but she sang to his waiting heart in the shadows.  
  
The light pricking against her eyes shifted oddly. The chandelier? She turned into a series of grace notes. A voice, raucous - another of de Garouville’s hecklers? - she had no space for worrying on it now.  
  
It was only at Constance’s aborted startle, the consummate professional moving out of cue, that Sylvie realised the chandelier was falling. It dropped half a foot, then a foot more, the sun of the Opera House gone out of its course. Sylvie’s voice faltered.  
  
_“Porthos!”_  
   
Aramis ran onto the stage, clothed in a suit the wrong size, with an inventory tag from the Wardrobe dangling louchely off his collar.  
  
“You came to the show after all,” she said stupidly.  
  
He flashed her a ridiculous grin, teeth and eyes bright against the shadows in his face. “Long story. Talk later.” Glancing at the fallen chandelier supported precariously on the Persian’s sturdy shoulders, with all the orchestra pit between them, he asked, “Best way down to the seats?”  
  
Sylvie looked up at Box 5, dim and foreboding as it always was. “The vampire trap,” she said briskly, taking his arm and moving him backwards, wondering at the flinch as she touched him. She tripped the catch with her foot. “You’ll land on a crash pad. Take the door labelled ‘Service’...”  
  
Her friend fell through the stage, just as a rifle cracked. In a puff of smoke and light, simple as a child’s firecracker, Box 5 disappeared.  
  
Box 5.  
  
In a flash of light, Box 5 was gone.  
  
“Athos,” Sylvie whispered, throat gone sour as a toad’s.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“D’Artagnan, can you put your hands up for me?” Lucie asked in the ringing silence left by the explosion. She levelled her sturdy pistol at the young nobleman crouched behind the low wall of their box.  
  
“I thought we were friends,” d’Artagnan said, his coffee-dark eyes bright and sharp as a drawn rapier.  
  
“We are,” Lucie said earnestly. “I warned you to duck, did I not?”  
  
“Constance wouldn’t like this.”  
  
“It may seem strange, but I don’t define  _all_ of my life by a long-ago crush. I like you, d’Artagnan, but you’re about to dash off and do something heroic and stupid.  _As a friend,_  I’m telling you to put those handcuffs on and sit tight. It’ll all be over soon I promise.”  
  
He barked a short laugh. “Lucie, I don’t want to have to hurt you.”  
  
Her double-barrelled pistol moved slightly and fired. One of the bullets shot out, grazing his shoulder and burying itself in the flimsy wood of the box wall.  _“Ow!”_  he yelped.

“I'd rather things went peacefully,” she said. “I'm prepared for if they aren't.”  
  
“Old Serge never misses the first night of a show,” d’Artagnan said, suddenly.  
  
“So?” she asked, fair eyebrows furrowing.  
  
“Even when his wife was dying, he spared a few hours to come, it’s a legend, Constance said.”  
  
Lucie gestured impatiently with the pistol. “Move.”  
  
“So I asked who else was missing…”  
  
The door to their box cracked open.

“Couldn't you leave poor Mme Mauricia in peace?”

“Who?” Lucie asked. Her eyes widened. “Duck, d’Artagnan!”

 

**

  
High in the darkened fly walks, Athos crouched over the automaton of a donkey left over from the first act. He’d set it up, beautiful, winged, as an adornment for Sylvie’s art, and left one last surprise for her, for the ending.  
  
One of the fly men clambered up a level. “Grimaud?” he quavered, head turning towards where Athos held his post, muffled in coat and scarf and wide-brimmed hat. With an economical turn Athos twisted into deeper shadows, lost among the ropes and mechanics above the bright world-in-miniature of the stage.Then the man said, “Oh  _shit._  You were supposed to be in Box 5… Well,  _damn it._   _Enough._  This is our place now,  _Athos._  You’ve dogged us too long.” He pulled a blunt pistol from the back of his belt and called downwards, “Come up, my boys, my pretty boys, we’re going to kill the Phantom. We’ll take him, and kill him, and grind him up for  _sausage…”_  
  
There was a narrow line near Athos’ position. As fly men, stage hands, and ratcatchers swarmed into the flies like a horde of terriers, he leapt out over the stage, seven feet, and caught the slender rope with one hand, feeling the shock as his weight jerked at his arm, his shoulder. He heard whistles, old sailors’ calls from the veteran flymen, and climbed. 

 

**

 

The crowds were shifting. Porthos, with the weight of the sun-hot chandelier on his shoulders, cursed at them all in bitter Farsi. They jostled and ran like a flock of fat-tailed sheep, only with rather less intellect and focus.

 _“Get out of here, damn you,”_  he snarled, as another flurry of theatre-goers jostled against him - coming back from the main entrance, was it locked? The flamboyant, overdone chandelier weighed ever heavier on his shoulders and the strength was running from his legs. A small warm body flung arms around him - he spared a glance and saw it was the red-headed girl he had seen with Constance, in a white frilly dress and her hair falling in ringlets.  _“Go,”_ he told her.

“I'm sorry, M’sieu' _,”_  she quavered in French. “I don't understand.” And she held his waist tighter. On his other side, Little Louis braced against Porthos’s shaking legs. Together they did absolutely nothing to steady him, the brave little fools.

He breathed deep, holding on a little longer, keeping fire from touching the world. From touching  _them_.

“You there!” Porthos heard a voice of calm authority call, pitched to carry across any tumult. “Gentleman with the red feather in his hat! And Fox-Fur Muffler Man. Yes, you! Hard to port of the Persian gentleman, pick up that trailing edge of the chandelier! On three: lift. One, two -”

The weight lessened. With that slight reprieve, Porthos blinked sweat from his eyes. A man he'd near given up hope of seeing in this life stood in the aisle, chivvying the maddened crowd like an experienced sheep dog - or a ship’s officer managing his vessel's hands. Aramis, hair and eyes wild, looked at him briefly and grinned, teeth white and sharp.

 

**

 

On the stage, Constance squawked as her flying line, still attached to a sturdy leather belt around her middle, jerked and tightened. Her feet lifted from her high platform.

Fleur, below her, swore like the gutter urchin she was. “C’mon!” snapped Simone, and the Spirits of Beauty scrambled up a level to catch at the ankles of Truth, gently flying upwards.

_“Oh shiiit...”_


	47. Foiled!

M. Treville, old warhound, had seen his share of fighting. Now he hunched under the low curved wall of the private opera box, checking his heavy service pistol. Beside him, still nursing a bruised temple from when he had been shoved roughly to the floor by the Police Commissioner, M. Richelieu reached out with a foot and hitched up a polished ebony cane with the tip of his polished leather shoe. “A foil hidden inside,” he explained, unscrewing the cap of his stick with long, gnarled fingers.

“I remember,” Treville said shortly. “That time in -”

“Marseille, yes.”

Treville used the discarded scabbard to lift a beaver-skin hat slightly over the rim of the balcony wall, and waited.

“I wouldn't worry about snipers,” Richelieu said conversationally over the shouts and screams coming from below. “They'll be wanting high value hostages for capital or spectacle.” He nodded to the door of their box, his hooded, rheumy eyes inscrutable.

“Leave the tactics to me,” growled Treville. His eyes flicked to where Richelieu sat on the floor with the long length of shining steel beside him. The ancient magistrate's left shoulder hunched, with the arm tucked up, and he breathed carefully. “Did I damage you?”

Richelieu shook his head. “Heart. A bit troublesome this last year.”

“Always your weakest feature,” Treville said, expressionless.

“Heh.”

They waited in silence a moment longer, then Richelieu reached out one withered hand.

“Now?”

“In case we don't get the chance later,” Richelieu said, blue-lipped.

Treville grunted, rolled his eyes, then shuffled over, wary of the lip of the box, and of the door. He adjusted his own clothing, held out his own hand, and dropped a shining gold _napoleón_ into Richelieu's palm.

Richelieu smiled, smug as an eagle that just carried off a hare.

 

**

 

Lucie frowned, looking over d’Artagnan's shoulder. “Duck!”

The young Comte ignored her, straightening and reaching for something hidden at the side of the box. A bullet from across the auditorium clipped him, creasing the side of his head as he moved suddenly. The young man dropped like a stone.

Lucie knelt, her lacy skirts billowing around her. “I did warn you,” she told him. She touched his cheek lightly with gloved fingers. “You're so sweet, really. It's just that Marsac thinks you're a _bad influence_ on Aramis. That's all.”

D'Artagnan said nothing, eyes closed and breathing shallowly. “I wish we'd had more time - I honestly think your heart is in the right place and if I'd just had time to _teach_ you...” She tucked up his knees and pillowed his head on her bundled up shawl, the blood from the wound staining it blotchy red, like fallen carnations, and roughly bound his wounds with spare handkerchiefs.

Rising, Lucie turned crisply and nodded to the rough stableman pressed into a good jacket standing in the doorway. “Box 13 is  secure,” she told him. “Let's go!” And she locked the door behind her.

 

**

 

 _“I curse you, Grimaud,”_ Sylvie murmured. Some trick of the acoustics, or of the singer's specialised training, carried her voice, low and intimate, to the man where he prowled rapidly along the railing of the highest row of seating, the Gods, and hooked a line to go down a level.

 _“I curse you to the depths and breadths of what remains of your spirit,”_ the singer said, her dress shining like white flame against the shadows of the stage, her eyes fire. _“I curse your companions and allies, whether pagan or Christian, whether man or woman, whether boy or girl, whether slave or free. Let their paths be confounded, and their words shrivel on their tongues, and their amity break, as they themselves are broken.”_

Grimaud spared a glance down at the crowd in the Stalls - not as chaotic as he'd meant, the fire hadn't caught, but it was enough, it would serve, the patrons milling and trampling each other, bouncing back from the shut doors.

Lucie slammed along the row of boxes like a farmgirl plucking eggs, deft and rapid, as she immobilized her wealthy hostages with the aid of her followers. As she bound the hands of a portly banker, his starched shirtfront creaking and his jowls wobbling as he breathed rapidly, frightened as a rabbit, she spared a glance to the side and stared critically at the crowd below. “They should have run by now,” she muttered to herself. “They should have gone out the great doors -”

 _“I give Athos to the Seine, that gives half of itself to shadow, to secrets. Let the dark water keep and love him and guard his memory. I give you to the Seine also, Grimaud. I ask it to take you. I give you to drowning in the dark, in the bitter dark -_ ”

Marsac reloaded his rifle efficiently. There hadn't been many guards to remove - a surprisingly high number of policemen, perhaps, their duckbill _kepi_ and short capes easy targets. With a hissing of rope, Grimaud landed on the balcony-rim of Marsac's perch, his heavy boots dropping dirt onto the plush velvet.

“Take out the singer,” he told Marsac.

“I can't,” said Marsac blankly. “That's Aramis’ sister. He loves her.”

 _“Shut. The girl. Up.”_ Grimaud growled.

“No.”

In a flash Grimaud grabbed a fistful of shirtfront and, as strong as he was quick, lifted Marsac off his feet.

“You need my allies and suppliers,” the sailor grunted.

“I _have_ your allies and suppliers. They like me better.”

On the stage, Sylvie looked up, swallowing, as a piece of backdrop, a heavy piece of ‘brick’ wall came tumbling down, the strings which held it cut.

Marsac kicked out, crushing Grimaud's kneecap - the stronger man flinched, just a little, and Marsac hit him with the butt end of his rifle.

 

**

 

In the Grand Foyer, in a silent hall that echoed oddly with the screams and the terror from the auditorium, Anne Mauricia fumbled frantically with one of the locks and a hairpin, while Old Serge wrenched, with little success, at a bar nailed across it.

The lock - a garish gilded thing made for courtesy more than security, snibbed open. Anne's pale lips moved into a smile. She glanced up to where Serge was still struggling. “I'll get your toolkit from the front desk.”

 _“Allow us, Your - I mean, Your Most, ah, I'm sorry, I mean -”_ a man said in German.

Anne looked over Friedrich Brandt, and a small scattering of fellow Ruritanians behind him, standing awkwardly. One fumbled in his pocket.

 _“Friedrich,”_ she said in the same language, _“if you get the doors open and guide these people to safety, you may call me Anne forever after.”_

He snapped to attention. _“You heard Her Grace,”_ he ordered them. _“Snap to it!”_

 

**

 

“What's taking them so long?” grunted Treville, looking at the door of the box, his pistol raised to the level of his eye, ready to kill whoever first came through.

“The assailants?” asked Richelieu, resting his head against the wall a moment. “Or our gendarmes?”

“Both,” Treville grunted.

“After the message from my new informant I… may have suggested to your Lieutenant that he take the long way around, with the police wagons.”

_“What?!”_

“It makes for a better spectacle,” Richelieu defended. “We'll put down this uprising soon enough but if there's… spectacle… Your funding is up for a vote next month.”

_“There are people's lives down there!!”_

Richelieu rose to a predatory height. “I count lives by the bushel not my fingers, Treville. I don't have the luxury of your perspective.”

“You _idiot!!!_ And get down!”

 

**

 

Down in the stalls, Aramis called to the crowd, “Yes, good, keep the women and children inside each of your groups. We're taking this like _Frenchmen,_ with grace and aplomb -” He spared a grin at Porthos, who was still breathing heavily and shaking out the ache in his muscles, after the chandelier was taken off him. “Not how I expected Opening Night to go, to be perfectly honest. You?”

Porthos touched his cheek, feeling a light roughness of stubble, the heat around a healing scratch. “They let you go,” he said.

Aramis shook his head very slightly, eyes on Porthos. “I escaped - was rescued,” he corrected himself. “I'm sorry it took so long.”

Porthos pulled his hand away, just a little so that it hovered in the air. “I traded my honour for you.”

Aramis flinched, the wolfish light in his eyes dimming. Porthos dropped his hand to the man’s shoulder and felt it wound up and tight under the batting of the jacket.

“If I hadn't -” the man breathed.

Porthos squeezed his shoulder briefly, loosened his hold as Aramis shuddered under his hand, and thought of the people who died in the Box 5 explosion, unaware and unknowing, the crowd around them, barely settled, still painfully vulnerable.

“It wasn’t -” he said. “That was a choice that _I_ made. You see.” The Frenchman’s sloe-black eyes searched his face. “Whatever you did,” Porthos said, “whatever you chose, you go on, do you hear me? You do the best you can each day and you go on.” It was what he told himself  each night. Sometimes it was enough.

But not tonight.

He felt the shift in the man’s knotted shoulder, like the turning of the tide, before Aramis stepped away, bowing briefly, his eyes shuttering.  
  
“I’m glad you aren’t badly hurt,” Porthos said.   
  
The Frenchman’s lips flickered, then he beamed, brightly and shallowly. “I always get by, Porthos.” He turned back to the restive crowd. Across the Auditorium one of the doors out creaked open. “Volunteers for scouting the exit, _go.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _whether pagan or Christian, whether man or woman, whether boy or girl, whether slave or free_ \- I borrowed some of the wording of Sylvie’s curse from some old Roman curse tablets found at Bath a few decades ago, because I couldn't find any examples of native Breton curses. So this is, honestly, not as accurate as it could be _except_ that we've already established that her Da was a folklorist and she might well have picked up some wording from him. (Many Roman curse tablets focussed on Neptune or some other water deity, and commended something lost (like a nice cloak that had been stolen while they were bathing) to the deity so they'd protect it and punish the theft. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_curse_tablets


	48. The Stars At Bloody Wars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stayed up late finishing this and there are probably a raft of typos which I promise shall be fixed in the morning.

_Mazandaran, the governor's palace, years ago_

 

“You came back for me.”

My Lady lifted her hand to the windings of Athos’ turban, and the strip of cloth he'd hidden his face with. Curling her fingers into talons, she ripped the cloth away and the raw flesh burned anew. “Does it hurt?”

“Always,” he rasped.

“You're so beautiful when you're ugly,” she told him. She put her hand to his face, on the undamaged side, smoothing her fingers along his cheek, dragging her thumbnail over the scar on his mended upper lip. She bent, dipped her head and kissed him, her light tongue flickering into his mouth. He held still, kneeling helpless before her, his knees sinking into the rich carpets of the underground chamber, a cool draft at his back from the secret door.

He jerked back at last. “Murderess.”

She tsked, straightening. “I am royalty, and above such questions.” The pin that held her veil primly under her chin loosened, and the brilliant cloth, disarranged, slid over her black-scented hair like a lover's hand. It fell looser, revealing the pearly column of her throat, the thick gall left by an old collar that ran across it, binding her still. One hand jerked, spasmodic, and covered the scar. Around them the retainers and harem attendants of the hidden chamber bustled and scurried; above, muffled through the ceiling, were screams, a quiet thunder of running feet, the scattered popping of gunfire.

“They are coming for you,” he said. “I should open the doors and make it easier.”

“You won't. Whatever I am you love me, and you always will,” My Lady told Athos, gripping his wrists. He swallowed desperately. Her green eyes trapped him, dark as the clouds before a killer storm, as inescapable.

“I can take you away,” he told her. Dizzy as he was, from the agony of the burning, from the opium he took to soothe it, he could still guide her out of here through the secret tunnels, could muffle her in humble cloth, could hide her servants also. They could run.

“‘Away?’” Anahita's cool fingers loosened on his wrists.

“Yes. We can cross the wild country disguised as peasants and slip out on my papers, you could be free of all of this…”

“No!” My Lady's hands dropped and she stepped back. “I, run? I? _I?_ Do I look half a woman to you?”

“Come away with me, My Lady. Anahita.”

The Head Eunuch, a tall man, his face worn thin with experience and his eyes darkly intelligent under high brows, looked straight at her, silent.

“You will remain with me, Reza,” she told him coolly. “You are my hands and my feet.”

 _“Please,”_ Athos begged.

“You'd have run with Samara, if you could have,” she said, musing. “My beautiful, ugly man.”

Athos shuddered. “It was not just, what you did.”

“I did it for the Good of the State,” she said, smiling pleasantly, “I'll not be savaged in verse by a slip of a girl.”

“She wrote nothing but truth.”

“It was treason.” She clicked her tongue, musing. “But I gave her such a gift in return, Athos: a good death. A _grand_ death, my love. What secrets did she find for you at the end, hm? How was she transformed in the fires of my proving ground?”

_“It was a waste of flesh.”_

She turned her head, stately as an ancient queen. “If they take you alive, Nazneen,” she said to the maid beside her, “you will be outraged. For that is the way of armies and captive women.”

“Yes, My Lady,” Nazneen answered.

“You know what to do.”

“Of course, My Lady.”

The attendant, Reza, made a soft sound of dismay, lips parting to show the void of a tongueless mouth. The little maid smiled at him tremulously, bravely, and took his large hand.

“I can protect you!” Athos insisted.

My Lady laughed at him, merry and clear as silver bells. “My dear Athos,” she said kindly, lifting his chin with the tip of one finger, “so frayed, so very dear. How even can you protect yourself?”

Something crashed into him then - a weight? a burning? he never really knew. “I was not always hollow inside,” he heard, and he knew nothing more.

 

**

 

_the Opera House, now_

 

The line Athos reached for burned his palms as his weight caught on his arms and shoulders. He swung through the air like a murderous pendulum and kicked out with his feet, changing his direction as he moved. The line hit a cross-joist and fish-tailed itself, sending him up in an unexpected arc. Behind and above him a pair of flymen tripped along the heavy pole that held an entire painted backdrop fit for the grand stage below. It swayed ponderously but the pair of them, in rope slippers from their sailing days, were nimble and balanced. Athos bided his time and, on the backswing, booted one in the face so that he fell, stumbling backwards, his fall interrupted by planting a knife in the heavy painted canvas of the backdrop: the cloth rasped loudly as it parted around the blade. His friend, also knocked askew, was less lucky, falling so that his ankle tangled in the lines and pulleys of a flying rig and he dangled upside down and red-faced.

Athos pulled himself up to a narrow crouch on the cross-joist, and slipped a narrow pipe from a long pocket in his breeches. Eying the flies, the ropes and joists and hanging scenery, coolly, he loaded the pipe with a long needle feathered in black and red.

Three men caught his darts, two in the neck and one dangling, haphazard, from a coarse, dark sleeve, before Athos moved on, skittering along an upper line like a rat manoeuvring on a ship's cable, gaining height in the shadows.

 

**

 

“Let go, damn you,” Constance hissed at the young dancers wrapped around her legs. Simone hid her face against the older woman's hip; Fleur stared wide-eyed at the men struggling above in the darkness. _“Argh,_ we've got too high, hang on tight.” And she clutched at the girl's fragile dancing dresses, crumpling the tissue of them as if it might hold if the strength in their arms failed.

The pulleys and lines of her flying rig were hopelessly tangled - flymen hanging off them like bizarre fruit on the vine, counterweights bringing the women upward. Jussac, the solid giant whom she had relied on for flight for weeks of rehearsal, crouched high beside the tangle of rope looking back and forth. “For God's sake, Jussy,” one of the men, dangling by an ankle, cried. He struggled to get free but there was too much tension in the tangles of rope; his comrade beside him, eyes wide and desperate, stopped breathing, a blot of red and black in his throat. “We're on your side!”

 _“I'm sorry,”_ Jussac mouthed to her. He produced a long, folded knife from his pocket, and opened it out with a clicking sound. He started sawing at the line.

 _“Burn in hell,”_ Constance snarled. “Alright, my loves,” she said to the little dancers, “We'll do a pas de trois. Simone first, reach up with your right hand and take mine. Graceful, now: dancers do everything beautifully. I'm going to throw you. Remember when I taught you the Juliet part of Romeo-and-Juliet? Strong and gentle now.” Slowly, steadily, talking all the while, she unclamped the teenage girl from around her legs until they were connected only by the grip of their hands. She grinned down at the girl, reassuring. “I'm going to swing you and you're going to flooaat over to that bit of stone tower from the castle scene and you're going to cling to it like a bloody champion.”

Simone nodded. “I love you, Fleur,” she said rapidly, though she fixed her eyes up at Constance as she said it.

“Find your point,” Constance told her calmly, and began rocking the girl back and forth to build up the swing. A man in rough workman's clothes fell past them, face a rictus of horror. “And go!” Obedient to her senior's instructions, Simone Pepin _flew._

The line supporting Constance and Fleur staggered as Jussac severed a couple of strands and the extra weight of the girl sagged it down. “Jussac,” Constance called, “we used to drink beer together, it was fun, and I am _going to toast your entrails for sausages!_ ”

“It's not personal!” he shouted down.

“It's personal for me!!!”

Someone she didn't know, with rat tails dangling off the brim of his hat, himself caught precariously by a knife dug into a canvas backdrop painted as a garden, snarled, “Bloody women.”

“Don't you start!” She manoeuvred Fleur the same way as Simone and didn't dare look as the girl flew into the darkness. The line sagged again and she hid her face in her hands.

“Constance!” the girls called in close harmony. “Come over!”

“I'll be right on that,” she called. She was alone, hanging in stillness like a spider bound inextricably to her thread. Constance would never be able to slip out of her own harness like this. She wished desperately d'Artagnan were there. Even just to be there…

With a gurgle Jussac fell past her, clawing at his throat as something invisible choked him. She blinked down at him as he fell, surprised.

A thick knotted rope fell also, in arm's reach.

 

**

 

Athos ran rapidly along the highest walkway in the echoing void of the flytower. He paused to glance down, one hand on the fine cable that was the only safety line it had, and watched a pair of girls in bright gauze cling to the hovering stone of the scenery tower and kick one of the rat catchers in the head until he fell off, screaming. His lips twitched.

Something clipped him in the head and he staggered, reeling. A thrown knife? A bit of brick? It did not matter: it served to break Athos’ grip on the support cable and he fell with a soft gasp.

He caught himself with a terrible burning jolt on a lower line soon enough, it's true, one of the support cables for the ridiculous toy of a clockwork donkey that he'd made for Sylvie, years ago, it seemed. He wrapped his ankles around it and let himself skim down.

From below, drifting from the stage, he heard her now: _“I give Athos to the Seine, that gives half of itself to shadow, to secrets. Let the dark water keep and love him…”_ What of that, he wondered, catching his breath on the back of the silent automaton. Sylvie had given him away. Was he hers to give at all? But then, she should know...

The girls on the tower shrieked as one of the cables which held it snapped, frayed from some unseen force above.

 _“No!”_ screamed Constance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _“I, run? I? I? Do I look half a woman to you?”_ \- phrase lifted, with a minor tweak, from Old Alex's book.
> 
> // We see some of the aftermath of the first scene Chapter 39. The Sun, and "I was not always hollow inside," echoes a line first used in Chapter 32. The Bronze Pot.
> 
> // Chapter title comes from a verse of Tom O'Bedlam, a poem about a madman:
> 
> ... I know more than Apollo  
> For oft, while he is sleeping  
> I behold the stars,  
> At bloody wars,  
> And the wounded welkin weeping.
> 
> (And I sing: any food, any feeding?  
> Feeding, drink, or clothing?  
> Come dame or maid  
> Be not afraid  
> Poor Tom he will not harm thee.)


	49. Ebb and Flow

Brujon and Clairmont, young cadets of the police force, looked at each other uneasily as Lieutenant Cornet smoked a cheap cigarillo in the courtyard.

Horses champed their bits, harnessed to the tall black police wagons. The officers they had gathered in anticipation of the night at the opera, bulked with auxiliaries from another district, caped in red, jumbled together around them. One ducked his head, breath steaming a little in the cool night air, and checked the lock of his carbine.

“Sir,” said Brujon, his aristocratic drawl carefully softened to the neutral French accent favoured in the ranks, “Sir, there's been no word from Commissioner Treville in the last ten minutes. That means -”

Lieutenant Cornet, the district of Montmartre thick in his speech, replied, “A little longer, sonny. Don't want to cause a public disturbance unnecessarily, now do we? The messenger probably… turned down the wrong alley.”

Clairmont, also of Montmartre, said, “Sir, Treville was very clear in his instructions. Sir.”

“‘Sir, sir, sir,’” Cornet warbled. “Am I gonna forget it if you don't say it?”

“No, sir, I -”

“None of your cheek, boy.”

Clairmont and Brujon looked at each other again.

“Eyes front!” Cornet barked.

 

**

 

In one of the high boxes, Marsac and Grimaud wrestled, their bodies too close and intimate to draw weapons or tools, shoving back and forth with teeth bared and thumbs gouging at eyes. Grimaud was a storm made flesh, mad and unstoppable, yet the young sailor was surprisingly wily, tough and quick on his feet.

“I'll kill you,” Grimaud told him frankly, blood pouring freely from one ear where Marsac had bitten it. “You're a fool, and weak.”

Marsac grinned, mouth bloody. “Many things make me strong.” Grimaud's heavy, ringed hand smashed him in the lower jaw. Marsac barely swayed on his feet, rolling his neck. A folded knife dropped into his hand from his sleeve, a long-bladed _navaja_ from Seville. With an oily clicking ratchet, he opened out the blade.

Grimaud rolled his eyes and beckoned Marsac back into the fight.

 

**

 

Treville kept his gun raised, elbow bent and the weapon about the level of his ear, a comfortable position as he growled at Richelieu to get down, get out of sight. He snapped it down soon enough as the door slammed open, and nearly shot the young woman who stumbled inside: Lucie de Foix, with her yellow hair in tangles and the lace on her dress ragged.

“I'm terrified,” she confessed to the Police Commissioner. “Uncle Treville, it's all happening so fast.”

Treville set his pistol back in rest, eyes softening.

“I did not know that you were related,” said Richelieu, watching the two of them.

“My god-daughter,” Treville confessed. “De Foix and I were blood-brothers, didn't you know? Lucie. You're unhurt.”

“It's the Commune all over again!” she exclaimed.

“I remember the first time,” Treville said grimly. “I would wish you out of this.”

“If wishes were fishes,” she said wryly, a dimple showing in one cheek.

“If you take shelter in a corner,” he said, “I will do my best to protect you.”

Her chin rose. “My brother was a soldier, my brother before him. Uncle. It is not in my bone and sinew to sit idly by.”

The wrinkles in Treville's face cut deep. “I know,” he said. He lowered his pistol to shoulder-height even as Lucie's hand, hidden in her skirts, came up, de Foix's old service pistol cocked and ready.

“I saw you when I was a little girl,” she said, very small. “When the National Guard came to steal the cannons out of Montmartre, and the women walked out and stopped them, you were there. You joined the Commune that day with my brother. Treville. I don't think you've forgotten that.

“THAT WAS A DIFFERENT TIME!!” Treville roared. Softer, sadder, he said, “I was a different man.”

“And now you bend your neck to a crooked magistrate,” she said coolly. “It's easier, I imagine.”

“If you think keeping the peace is the ‘easy’ path, Lucie, you know nothing of war.”

“Not always easy,” she answered. “And not always right. Stand down, Uncle. Or _join us.”_

“Mother-of-God,” he gritted, “I can't shoot you.”

“I can,” said Richelieu.

 

**

 

When he was shot, at first d'Artagnan did not know what was happening. He heard nothing, felt nothing, as Lucie spoke. He was on the floor suddenly? Carpet against his cheek, the smell of dust and old wine, Lucie's voice… Then the hot jagged burn in his scalp began to throb, like being punched with spiked metal.

D'Artagnan had ridden a great deal as a boy - still did when he was in the country - and he'd had his share of falls, knocked breathless and sprawling with perhaps a crack in a bone to show for it. A wrenched finger when he was tiny had him bawling for hours, he recalled. This was nothing!

He was on the floor. Lying on his side, feet tucked up. His scalp burned; he felt the pressure of tightly wound cloth and dampness, cool against his skin.

D'Artagnan was on the floor.

He was on his side, on the floor. He rolled over, onto hands and knees, and levered himself upwards. Immediately, the hasty bandage, like a fragile structure of woven reeds and twigs set in a river feeling the first, exuberant flood of spring, gave way. Blood fountained down, dripping on the carpet to mix with the stain of old wine. He pushed at it desperately with his hands, but even so it got into his eyes and his vision went white.

Just a graze, he told himself. Head wounds bleed like anything - gold to garlic nothing was… lodged in a part of his brain that he needed…

He was on the floor, kneeling, fumbling by touch for napkins and a bottle of water in the refreshment basket, for something. His searching fingers found the leatherbound hilt of the epee he'd hidden in the box earlier, ready for trouble. D’Artagnan laughed to himself, filled with sudden hilarity.

 

**

 

The crowd from the stalls surged through the echoing hall that held the Grand Staircase, spewing through the new-opened doors like high-pressure water through narrow pipes.

“Go!” Mme Mauricia shouted, from where she stood beside Herr Brandt, and gestured frantically to the outer doors. “The way is clear!”

It was then that armed riflemen appeared from the upper floors. One of them opened fire.

 

**

 

“Cornet is going to kill us for this,” muttered Clairmont, perched in the front of the police wagon.”

“A schoolboy prank,” Brujon insisted, through the juddering of the metal wheels on the cobblestones. “Y-youthful exub-berance.” Despite the bravado of his words, the elegant young cadet looked crushed inside. Clairmont put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You know what Porthos would do...” he encouraged.

Brujon squared his shoulders. “You're right.” The first of the wagons braked sharply in front of the main doors of the opera house and armed gendarmes leaped out and ran inside. “Squad!” Brujon declared sharply, “we’re taking the side entrance. Follow me!”

 

**

 

“I can,” said Richelieu.

Treville spun, gun in hand. His eyes were wild. “No,” he protested. “She's young, she doesn't know what she's doing.”

Lucie straightened, indignant. “I always knew, Uncle. Even when I was sixteen and you sent me away.”

Treville cursed.

Richelieu's bony hands moved on the glossy wooden handle of his hidden foil. His eyes hooded. “She is responsible for this. In part,” he amended, to be fair.

“So are you,” Treville growled. “Playing games with the city and spending lives like centimes, trifles to be discarded. Tying my hands when I work for _justice.”_

Richelieu smiled thinly. “I do what I must, for the good of France. And when I die I shall give my accounting books to God, not you.”

“You understand,” Lucie said to Treville, though her eyes fixed on Richelieu and her pistol lowered. “You _know.”_

“I do,” Treville answered. And he threw a lap rug over her head and knocked her down.

 

**

 

In a little side corridor, barely considered, left off many of the maps of the building, Feron leaned against a wall covered with decaying, yellowed plaster, half-papered with old playbills and lurid pornographic prints. He shut his eyes, supported by the wall and two ebony canes, and breathed.

No follow-through, he thought to himself, that was the trouble. He’d act from a moment's passion of venality or spite, channelling the viciousness of his being, and then he'd be filled with utter regret and want to change things. Where did that leave him? Ineffective as some pantomime villain, a yawping figure of grease-paint and stacked shoes.

He might as well be in a play…

A warmth beside him, M. Bourbon - _Louis_ \- sat on the floor, his skin a pearly, pasty shade a and his lips red from coughing. “We're missing the finale,” Louis whined. When Feron ignored him, Louis tugged at his trouser leg, tedious as an over-cosseted child. “I wanted to see the end.”

“Well, you can't!” Feron snapped. His bones hurt tonight, like small animals were trapped inside his joints trying to chew their way out, and he could feel the rain coming from outside.

Time to leave off, he thought to himself. There was a side door here, forgotten by most, leading onto a side alley. He let go of one ebony cane so that it clattered, rudely, on the floorboards, and put his hand on the latch. It swung open and a gust of cool, damp night air brushed against his face.

A squad of police cadets ran in, young and painfully earnest.

Feron handed the one in the lead a map sketched roughly onto a cloth napkin. “Follow that and you can take the revolutionaries from the rear,” he said.

“Treville said to -” Brujon said, wild-eyed. “But how can we trust you.”

“You can't,” Feron answered, grinning. It was a brief moment but he enjoyed it. “Now get moving, b-b-babies.”

 

**

 

He'd finally cleared his eyes, while listening to the screaming.

D'Artagnan tightened the last knot of his bandage and risked a look over the rim of the balcony. Most of the crowd in the auditorium were gone, the singers and dancers of the show fled from the stage. A few remained - leery of stepping into the shadows of the wings, perhaps. Sylvie Baudin in her white dress still held the stage. 

His eyes flicked to the side a moment, caught by two men struggling savagely in one of the other boxes, before breaking and leaving for the corridor.

Sylvie Baudin's skirt was caught, d’Artagnan realised, the gorgeous gem-studded flounces of it caught under a tumbled piece of the set and she tugged at it even as the two basses tried to lift the fallen, broken flat away from her.

As he watched, d'Artagnan saw a tower fall from the flies, a bit of decorative masonry from an earlier act - it dropped, caught itself, dropped again, the last few ropes holding a brief moment then releasing in a slowly articulated doom.

He saw girls in gauzy dresses, hopping along it like fleas, jumping for other resting places. He saw the ridiculous winged donkey from the first act drop down, its wings opening like an angel's and its head lifting, its mouth arching as some mechanism inside produced an amazing voice, a chord sourced out of heaven.

He saw a figure of darkness, a man masked in black, fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // I'm truly sorry I haven't given Lucie and Marsac better Evil Plot Energy. They express a point of view, anyway, even if their actual actions come across as a bit daft.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navaja
> 
> // I got the details of what it feels like to be grazed by a bullet from a survivor, IzzyBlue's discussion of the experience: https://redditblog.com/2016/01/05/this-is-what-it-feels-like-to-have-a-bullet-graze-your-scalp-as-told-by-a-gun-shot-survivor/
> 
> // _to steal the cannons out of Montmartre_ \- “On March 18, the reactionary leader of the new government, Adolphe Thiers, sent troops to take cannons out of Paris in the middle of the night. His aim was to disarm the workers and to sell out to the Prussians. The women of the neighborhood of Montmartre awoke and charged up the hill where they swarmed and fraternized with the troops, placed themselves on the cannons, and stopped them from being removed. The troops were so persuaded by the women and the people’s militia of the National Guardsmen of Paris that they went over to the people, arresting and firing upon their own commander.” - https://www.marxist.com/women-in-the-paris-commune.htm


	50. Bar the Screaming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Please forgive me wrapping up this crowd scene so quickly but I had other things to do and I didn't want the story to get bogged down.

**Excerpt from “The Journals of Louis Bourbon (self-published)”**

_They say it was quite quick, as these things go. Commissioner Treville of Our Noble Gendarmerie foiled a foul Communard Plot with little loss of innocent life through the information of M. Feron, obtained at Great Personal Risk. I've put off my visit to Switzerland a while longer. Can't turn my face to the wall just yet, old chums, not until I'm certain the newspapers know which story they're printing._

_I don't think Philippe will mind, or Phillipe-Achille. I'll be visiting them both this afternoon._

_It's just not fair, that's what._

 

**

 

Porthos never thought he'd be shepherding two children through this disaster, but there it was.

After the shooting was done, most of the crowd milled about the echoing entrance hall that held the Grand Staircase, while the police earnestly tended to the wounded and sorted the sheep from the goats. Good luck with that, he thought sourly.

Young Louis, Mme Mauricia's son, was silent as ever, calm to the look of it, but he clung to Porthos’ hand with energy and tenacity as their eyes skipped over the crowd looking for his mother. A flash, a glimpse of wild hair and the set of an elegant back in an ill-fitted jacket - Aramis on the stairs, avoiding him again. He remembered, fleetingly, that day they'd stood together on the upper level as the Frenchman daintily shot his cuffs, examining his reflection in the mirror. It wasn't long ago: only a few days, really.

Young Luce-Marie wrapped one arm around his hip, as if to prop him up still.

“Here,” Porthos smiled down at her. “I won't fall, I promise.”

“We have to look after each other,” she said seriously.

 _“Found_ you!” two bright soprano voices chorused. It was two of the little dancers, their bright gauze torn and ragged and their hair falling down in swags from their pins. Simone’s left wrist was wrapped tightly with fresh white bandages. Fleur gripped her other hand, white-knuckled, and their eyes shone with a hectic brilliance.

“We all thought you were on the other side of the hall -”

“- La Bonacieux is looking -”

“ - she was _really worried_ -”

“- so we're helping!”

Against his side, Porthos felt the little girl flinch and tremble.

“You should have seen us up in the flies. I was all -”

“- and then your Mum was all -” said Fleur, gesturing.

“- and she! So we!” Simone waved her free hand, heedless of further injury. “And then I thought Fleur was going to fall but then -”

“Oh, that was _amazing!_ ”

Porthos grinned down at the eight-year-old girl plastered to his side. “Luce-Marie kept the chandelier up so it didn't catch on fire.” She bit her lip. “I mean it,” he said seriously. “‘Tweren’t for you and Little Louis, I'd never have held it any longer.”

Luce-Marie nodded uncertainty. “Thank you, M'sieu,” she said politely. “I thought you were very brave.”

The little dancers looked at each other, then back at her. _“Eeeeee!!”_ they squealed. “You're just like your Mum, we have to keep you now. C'mon, c'mon, we'll take you to her.” They dropped quick, deep, dancer's curtsies to Porthos, grinning, and tugged the little girl away. He smiled as they went, but his side felt very cold.

 _“Mama!”_ Louis tugged his hand free, and disappeared into the milling crowd.

Porthos frowned, looking back to the upper stair. Aramis was gone. He began to surge through the crowd, looking.

 

**

 

Ignoring a coffle of the Opera House ratcatchers, their wrists bound with iron and their tail-adorned hats tipped low, Lucie kept her own head down, her lacy dress hidden under a borrowed coat, caught up in a crowd of hysterical women. She was like them, on the outside at least. She'd slip out with them through the great doors. It wasn't ever over.

Suddenly, a fat banker sitting weakly by a statue of a cupid, trembling and slack-jowled, dropped the handkerchief with which he mopped his brow and shrieked, “That's her! She's one of them.”

Lucie kept her eyes low and continued to walk, surrounded by women.

 

**

 

Aramis sagged with his back against one of the cool mirrors that decorated the highest level of the great hall that held the Grand Staircase. Grand as the view was he was obscured, a little, by the spiky fronds of an ornamental plant and he used the scrap of privacy to duck his head and breathe. Hidden, his face worked in a savage grimace.

A hand dropped on his shoulder and his knees buckled, black dots swimming in front of his eyes.

 _“The devil take you and sit you on his fiery hob,”_ he snarled at the police cadet touching him, _“will you stop doing that?”_

Brujon stared at him, concerned. “You don't look so good, M'sieu’. I can help you down to the medical section.”

Aramis stepped away, out of arm's reach of the young man, and stared dubiously at the mill of nurses, stretchers, and rumple-haired police doctors attending some of the overcome theatre-goers in a cordoned off part of the hall. His stomach roiled at the thought of going down there, of strangers putting hands on him, or perhaps that was only the last draught of Anne's laudanum wearing off. He smiled sunnily at Brujon. “I'm fine, thank you.” The boy stared at him dubiously. “Where's Sylvie Baudin?”

Brujon consulted his notes. “She never walked off the stage.” He stepped back as Aramis straightened ominously. “That's what Mme de Garouville said - she knocked her head when the tower fell then a black-winged monster picked her up and disappeared through the trap.”

“The Phantom,” Aramis muttered. “That's who it would be, not G-” His face worked. Then he smiled again. “Well done, lad. Now report that to Treville.” Ragged as he was, his voice still had the snap of easy authority that the cadet knew from his officers. Brujon turned on his heel, made three rapid strides, then turned back at the sound of glass breaking. Aramis had gone, leaving nothing but a broken mirror.

 

**

 

Friedrich Brandt hesitated in front of a Lieutenant of Police, his French drying up in the heat of the moment. “... son, … where's your ticket… now...” asked the Lieutenant.

 _“What?”_ Friedrich answered. _“I'm sorry, I don't understand.”_

“You don't… here, …?”

One of his countrymen, Heinrich the Butcher, stared at him desperately, the tools he'd used for breaking open the doors dropped to the floor nearby. He saw the Commissioner, Treville, coming towards them with implacable purpose.

The police had their eye on them, again. Merciful God. Sweat prickled his neck and trickled down his spine. He reminded himself not to _run..._

“You will release my personal bodyguard at once!” declared Mme Mauricia, in her neat, dull suit, coming down the stairs like a queen in pageantry.

“Says who, Madame?” Treville asked grimly.

“Says the Grand Duchess of Ruritania,” Mme Mauricia said, coldly, regally, implacably. Her chin did not rise - she was already haughty. “You will address me as ‘Your Grace’.”

“Reeeeally?” purred Richelieu, still white around the lips and leaning heavily on Treville. “We absolutely _must_ talk tomorrow, Your Grace. Over coffee. Ruritanian trade agreements are such an _interesting_ conversation starter these days.”

She nodded slightly, an agreement between equals.

Richelieu waved one ringed hand. “Oh, let them go, my dear Treville. How gauche to disbelieve a Head of State.”

At that moment, Anne's small son ran into her arms and she lifted him up, blinking back tears behind a joyful smile.

A journalist, snuck into the crowd, flashed his camera to record the scene for eternity.

 

**

 

As a camera flashed to the side, Lucie kept walking.

“No,” the banker insisted, “that woman held a gun on me. She's depraved. Arrest her! (Not so vicious _now,_ are you?)”

Police in capes and kepis began to ring around the group of women. Lucie swore to herself, faked a stumble, and withdrew her last pistol from its holster hidden on a band on her leg. The great doors loomed, the rain-washed night beckoning.

“Stand back!” Lucie snapped, her pistol held up at the level of her eyes. “I'm a crack shot.” The banker faltered and her hand darted downwards, fired and winged the man, and returned to its position. One bullet left. The crowd surged and moved. One of them, a little girl surrounded by dancers, stumbled, her dark red ringlets falling over her shoulders. Lucie saw her and the blood fled from her cheeks. The pistol lowered.

 _“Luce!”_ came a cry, and Lucie turned wildly to see her old friend, dishevelled and wrapped in a dark man's overcoat.

“Constance?” she asked.

 _“Luce-Marie!!”_ Constance called. Lucie raised the pistol again.

 

**

 

At the top of the stairs, Porthos paused at Constance's cry. He turned and saw young Lucie de Foix brandishing a tiny pistol, saw Constance and the younger dancers clutching at the little red-headed girl.

It was too far away for him to do… anything.

He ran down three steps, anyway, and had an excellent view as the Comte d'Artagnan, head and upper arm wrapped in white bandages, stumbled out of the cordoned off medical area and dived in the way of Lucie's gun.

Surprised, her finger twitched on the trigger.

Blood blossomed on the Comte's arm, below his bandage. He swayed, fell, and the scene dissolved in a chaotic sprawl of police, opera patrons, the Comte, and, somewhere in there, Lucie de Foix, godmother of this attack.

Above Porthos, one of the mirrors was smashed, absent and present as a missing tooth, and in the dark void he could just perceive a passageway.

 _“She's getting away!”_ someone cried.

Porthos ran up the stairs and dived through the mirror.

 

**

 

Sylvie spat out a mouthful of sand. It was hot and gritty against her cheek and she lay tumbled awkwardly on her side with one arm trapped beneath her. Cracking dry eyes open, she turned her head and looked around.

She was in the underground forest, the sculpted trees of steel and bronze gleaming dully in the low light and stretching out, repeated over and over in the mirrors. Everything repeated, she thought to herself, watching a girl in a crystal-white dress with hair in wild streamers scattered from its careful coiffure, the crystal stars adorning it disarranged. She moved a hand and the girl moved with it, tucking a lock of hair again behind her ear. The girl looked lost, Sylvie thought. She lifted her chin stubbornly, then crawled on hands and knees to where a clot of darkness lay under an oak. Under the rough gabardine, when she shifted it, Athos stirred, still in the black shirt and pants, comfortable and worn-in, that he'd dressed in to see her performance. His eyes were off - one pupil a tiny dot, tight as the period at the end of a sentence, the other a spreading pool of spilled ink, lost and open on the ruined side of his face - strange, how she'd forgotten to see the scarring. Sylvie threaded careful fingers through his scalp, looking for bumps.

“Samara,” he said, though dry lips. “Sylvie. Somehow it always comes down to this.

“I'm going to get you on your feet,” she told him grimly. “It's too hot in here and you aren't well.”

“The proving ground.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Chapter title comes from the phrase “All over bar the screaming...”
> 
> // _as the Frenchman daintily shot his cuffs, examining his reflection_ \- I set up the “Aramis found a secret door by asking himself which mirror had the best sight-lines” bit all the way back in Act 2, and by God and his little kittens I am using it.


	51. Heart Sick

“I was not always hollow inside,” Athos whispered, lips white, cheeks flushed, eyes wide and unseeing. “They took us out of the earth, warm copper and sleepy tin, and we were rough and unmannerly...”

Sylvie loosened his clothing with hands that shook, her sweat drawn springing up then drying in the baking heat. She couldn't reach her own dress laces, and the steel-boned bodice clamped around her. Bending, she tore the bulk of her gauzy petticoats away and let the over skirt swing freely about her legs.

“In the fire we purified ourselves, preparing...”

“Athos.” Sylvie patted his flushed cheek firmly. “Athos, everything you build has a way out, you love trapdoors.” Around them mirror-Sylvie and mirror-Athos multiplied into infinity, dizzying her eyes. “There's a way out, Athos.”

“Yes.” The mirror-Sylvie's shoulders slumped, relieved.

“Endure,” he said. “Endure this and in the cool of evening we can leave.”

She swore to herself, viciously, and he whimpered. Clicking her tongue she smoothed his sweat-damp hair and felt him roll on his side to hide his face in her belly. And she held him.

 

**

 

“You need light!” Porthos called into the darkness. “You'll get lost.

Silence.

Then, soft in the distance, Aramis: “I thought I'd just roll downhill. Like a ball. Or a piece of -”

“What good will you do if your neck is broken?”

“Sylvie’s down there! Your friend the executioner has her! You want me to just _walk away_ from that?”

Porthos struck a match on the sole of his boot. In the brief, flickering light he caught a hint of movement in the tunnel ahead.

“I just want you to be sensible about it, is all.”

_“Traitor!”_

A figure in a hat tassled with rat tails lunged out of the dark. Porthos dropped the match and, light on his feet, nimbly side-stepped, slapped the knife out of the man's grasp, and gripped the man's greasy head with both his large hands. “I want you to understand something,” he told the man pleasantly, beginning to squeeze, “I was never on your side.” The ratcatcher said nothing, his face swelling red, almost to apoplexy. When his weight sagged in Porthos’ hands he let him fall, unconscious, then bound his hands and feet with a bit of cord, so that he might be retrieved later.

“What an adept thief-taker you are,” Aramis said, “I shall applaud.”

Porthos’ mouth twisted, hidden in the dark. He found a cheap tin candle-lantern on the man's belt and lit it with another match. The Frenchman was still hidden in the shadows.

“Coming?”

No answer.

There was a fork in the tunnel nearby. He shone the light down both, and chose the less dusty way, the one more travelled.

He imagined he heard foot-steps after him, pattering in the dark.

 

**

 

“I've been shot three times tonight,” the Comte d'Artagnan protested, “you have to be nice to me.”

“Would you like me to kiss it better?” Constance called, brandishing a lantern in one hand and her weighted parasol in the other, as they ploughed through the heavy darkness of the Opera House’s inner workings. A pause stretched out, considering, and she turned to see him standing motionless, a dreamy smile scrawled across his face.

“Oh, _you…”_

The smile widened and his eyes twinkled impishly. She sighed. “We have to get moving. This night isn't over until all our chicks are back in the nest.”

“You know your way around these tunnels really well,” he said encouragingly.

“A bit. Me and - a lot of the dancers explore when they're young. I'm no different.”

“Then all the dancers are extraordinary.”

“Ha!” Then, “When you tripped, in the fight upstairs,” she asked cautiously. “And L- and Mlle de Foix trampled over you and got away...”

“I have bruises,” he agreed. “Ever so sore. Might I trouble you for some liniment, later?”

“You didn't do that on… purpose, did you?”

“Of course not,” he said, far too rapidly. “I'd been shot three times, remember? I came over all _funny._ And that.”

“You fool,” she breathed, stepping closer, setting her parasol down and touching his cheek with the palm of her hand. His eyes slid shut.

“Even if it _wasn't_ an accident,” he said, intently aware of the warmth of her hand, of her nearness, “and it _was_ an accident - I was there, I should know - how could you _possibly_ speak to me over the body of your first love?”

“D'Artagnan, we weren't like _that._ ”

“Your first love,” he said.

“She's a - a killer. Charles.”

“It was an accident. It was complicated. Darling, come here.” And the young man wrapped her in his arms and let her sob as if her heart were broken. Which it was.

 

**

 

Down and down and down… Porthos began to recognise the tunnels, the vaulting architecture and the distinctive twists, a combination of the beautiful and the labyrinthine that reminded him, inevitably, of Athos.

He glanced down and saw a trail of new blood under their feet, marking their path, and said nothing.

His little light cast feeble fingers towards a dark form lying askew on the floor ahead, and he felt a rush of abrupt movement from behind, brushing past like a sudden mistral.

Porthos hooded his lantern, moved to the side of the corridor where the wall would guide him, and slipped along on silent cat feet, near-tripping over Aramis kneeling hunched over.

“Best not to run ahead, you don't know what's down here,” Porthos chided. “Take care.”

“Funny man.”

Porthos brightened the lantern, and saw that Aramis knelt over a man, Marsac, his gloved hands laying over a dark red flower blooming in the ghost-white of Marsac's shirt.

“Hey, old friend,” Marsac said.

Aramis smiled quick and sudden. “Just hang on now.” Breathless, to Porthos, he said, “help me put pressure on the wound.”

“No,” said Marsac.

Porthos set the lantern on the ground and knelt heavily beside them, feeling Marsac's clammy forehead, the thready pulse at his throat. “Pressure!” Aramis insisted. It was useless, but Porthos covered his hands and pressed even so, and the Frenchman met his eyes briefly.

“You need to let me go,” said Marsac.

“Just let me take care of you.”

“Wanted you away from the nasty stuff,” Marsac continued. “Thought I owed you that. Stupid. It always finds a man.” His breath hitched. “I'm so sorry about Charles. I thought he was bad for you. I thought -” Aramis flinched, and Marsac mewled at the movement.

 _“I'm sorry,”_ Aramis whispered.

“Not much time.” Marsac licked his lips. “Listen, the inventor took Mlle Sylvie. And Grimaud followed them.”

Porthos lifted one hand to touch Aramis shoulder. “You can't hold on to everyone,” he said gently. He felt the warm flow of blood increase under one hand, felt Aramis shudder beneath the other.

“M. Nikbin,” Marsac whispered, “I've not been good to you. But please.”

He nodded when Porthos’ hand gripped Aramis’ collar and pulled the man away; as Aramis howled he shut his eyes and let himself sink.

 

**

 

A long time later, d'Artagnan said, “Marry me.”

“You don't understand,” Constance said wearily, even as she nestled into the strength of d’Artagnan’s arms, “people like me don't marry nobility.”

“They do,” the Gascon Comte answered, a light in his velvety dark eyes. “Marie Taglioni, Lola Montez -”

“I'd bring scandal and riot to your name,” she said. “In three years I'd be your big regret.” He took a breath. “Or I'd kill half my heart making myself over into _respectable_ and never dance again. I love you, d'Artagnan, but I can't do that either.”

The young man was silent, his arms warm around her. Constance turned in his arms to look up, full of regret, and saw that he was grinning, wide and boyish. “You told me you _love_ me...”

“No, I didn't! That was a slip of the tongue, on account of I'm tired. I -”

He kissed her forehead, gently, his lips very warm, then the tip of her nose. “But,” she said to his chin.

“But I love you, too,” he said. “Please kiss me.” And her arms came up around him, and he bent his head, and -

 

**

 

In the lower tunnels Aramis turned swiftly, shaking off Porthos’ hand as he stepped backward.

 _“Don't touch me,”_ he hissed viciously.

Porthos stepped back himself. His hand hovered in the air, useless, so he let it drop, swallowing back the hurt. “It was not me that killed Marsac,” he said, soft as a lost bird.

Aramis deflated. “It's not that. I -” He stared at Porthos’ eyes in the dimness, as if reading every scrap of hurt and guilt in them. His face softened. “It's only that I - I bruised that shoulder and I could use a little space now.” Mouth moving into a cheerful smile, unnerving in its falsity, he added, “but I am very glad of your company.” And the man moved off, bloody hands tucked into his pockets, ever out of reach like an untrusting cat.

When they finally reached the dark lake, girded with heavy stone pillars, he simply stepped into the scant belly of a long, narrow boat, balancing easily, and stared at Porthos with a mocking (defiant?) cock to his eyebrow until the Persian took up the oar.

 

**

 

They were underground. Their artificial sun, fuelled by furnaces, would never pass, not in time for these captives to live. In the reflections, the trees of steel and iron and dully-glittering bronze, the flickers of herself, she almost saw the shadow of a hanging woman. Sylvie blinked.

She wondered what Samara bint Tariq had thought, when she was here. The girl - the woman - had known what she was about, surely? She'd known the lion she was baiting, the bitter garden ahead.

Perhaps she'd wanted a glorious death. Perhaps she'd seen no other way…

“I'm not Samara,” she said aloud.

Releasing Athos’ limp body, she unhooked one of the jewel-encrusted stars from her ears and crawled away. This hell of heat and light and oneself divided into multitudes, it only _looked_ infinite. She would find the border.

She would get them out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Athos quotes himself, at the start of the chapter, as seen in the flashback in Chapter 31. The Bronze Pot.
> 
> // _Marie Taglioni, Lola Montez_ \- Marie Taglioni, likely the first ballerina to truly dance _en pointe,_ was married to Comte Auguste Gilbert de Voisins from 1832-36. I'm unclear on why they separated. Lola Montez, depending on the source, was either the mistress or the morganatic wife of Ludwig I of Bavaria. That didn't last… long… either, but she certainly had an adventurous life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Taglioni  
>  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Montez


	52. The Proving Ground

“Every detail, exactly as she said,” Aramis mused, pacing through the maze of rooms, each one made unique so that they stood together like a bouquet of architecture. He stepped through a hall carved in a flourishingly morbid gothic style holding a great ebony and gold catafalque. “I'll say this of the man's taste, he _knows what he likes._ Did he build like this in Persia, Porthos?”

“For other people, yes. He would sit in my garden in the evening, and listen to the songbirds. Aramis, take care: we aren't invited and he builds traps for the joy of it.”

“I'll look out for mousetraps,” the Frenchman said with an unseasonable gaiety, moving through a room tiled in blue and green. “As for the rest, why worry?” He ducked his head through a plain doorway. “My God!”

Porthos crowded up beside him, pistol at the ready.

In alarm and disgust, Aramis exclaimed, “Framed _prints,_ all over the walls, of flowers and big-eyed dogs, and… I'm starting to worry about this man's state of mind. But it's a dead-end, also.” Smoothly he moved back. _Sylvie!_ ” he roared suddenly. _“Sylvie!!”_

A faint thread of sound answered them, tangled in the labyrinth of rooms and Aramis followed its trail, head turning back and forth. Porthos followed, eyes hooded and his hand held high, to ward off a stray lasso.

 

**

 

Moisture slicked the palms of her hands as Sylvie scraped at the glass with the spikes of her elaborate star-earring. It was a cheap thing, the jewels in it not even cut crystal but mere, showy paste. Another point snapped and she slapped the glass in frustration, leaving it with a smear of blood.

 _“Sylvie!”_ she heard, faint and far away, the sound attenuated as a stream of water in the desert, as a shadow withering in the noon sun, a lone traveller lost among iron trees, her voice slowly dying...

“I'M HERE!!” she shouted back. “HELP US!!!”

 

**

 

Porthos’ eyes flicked down to the floor, caught by a dab of red caught between two tiles. He looked up and Aramis had gone, hasty man.

He tried an arched door at random and found a workshop, of tiny clockwork cogs and gears and finely crafted tools. A coppery half-articulated butterfly was fixed to the bench. He touched it and its membraneous wing stirred gracefully. Something clinked and he whirled, gun at the ready.

In the shadows of the store cupboard a small cat backed itself into the furthest reaches of a low cubby, growling furiously. Porthos crouched, reaching out his fingers and clicking his tongue but it stayed out of reach, its eyes glowing golden in the light from his lantern. He rose and continued on, another drop of blood beckoning him down a flight of stone steps through a heavy-pillared basement filled with a boiler and steaming pipes, and down a narrow hall into a room half apothecary store, half chemistry lab. His eyes traced the jars of the ingredients he recognised and continued around the room, weighing and measuring - but the blood trail had ended and nothing was disarranged. He reclimbed the steps and moved on through the maze until he found Aramis again.

There was a high bronze door, ornamented with a barren tree in bas-relief, and behind that tree an engraved orb that might be the pitiless sun, and the metal radiated warmth from inside. Porthos could see a mechanism that opened and closed it, an articulation of clockwork timers and hydraulic tubing, a crescent moon. Someone had come before them and smashed it, the crescent partly torn down and the lock jammed fast. Aramis crouched by the door, his head tilted to set his ear against the bronze.

Sylvie’s voice came through, heavy with forced cheer. _“... so my second earring shattered trying to scrape at the glass. The hair clips are even flimsier.”_

Aramis tutted, “This is why they say diamonds are a young lady's best friend.”

_“In case she gets accidentally trapped in a sad inventor’s nostalgic torture garden, you mean?”_

“Exactly!” His voice sobered. “Sylvie, there's metal backing the door and the lock is jammed. Might there have been another way built in? A trapdoor, safety exit, rope ladder? Athos comes across as a belt-and-braces man.”

_“He can't tell me.”_

“He's _there?”_

_“He hit his head! It's not his fault!”_

Aramis’ face worked. Then he squared his shoulders and said, calm and very reassuring, “Describe his symptoms, Sylvie, is he breathing?”

He looked up at the crunch of Porthos’ boots on a scattering of strewn metal scraps from the destroyed mechanism. “Help me,” he whispered. "They're baking alive in there.  _Help me."_

Porthos stared at him levelly, then turned on his heel.

“Well, that's just _fine_ then,” he heard the man mutter as he left the chamber.

 

**

 

Sylvie was burning in the desert, the trees all dead and withered, their last leaves fallen. She saw Athos lying in the sand slowly dying in his multiples and she saw herself lost, watching.

How many hours until nightfall? Until the cool of evening when the nightingales sang? The sun shone, pitiless, and the trees stretched into forever. Far off between the twisted knuckles of steel and iron and bronze a woman was walking, muffled in long, wide garments but her feet bare.

_“-vie! Sylvie!”_

She took a breath. “Aramis?” she croaked.

 _“Can you drag your Phantom closer to the door?”_ he called from the other side of the mirror. _“We'll patch him up together. It'll be fun!”_

“Oh yes, fun,” she muttered wearily.

Why did she ever step away from Athos how would she ever find him again now it was only that they'd die alone why? She looked back at the trees and the woman was closer, her eyes black sockets, her head hanging awkwardly with a black line across her neck. Dainty ankles flickered as she passed through the heat haze and she lifted one hand to her throat as if choking…

_“- keep talking to me, rozennig, I'm lonely out here...”_

She swallowed dryly. “I'm lost in reflections and only one of us is real.” She could walk away from the wall, of course she could, back and forth like a brainless ticking pendulum but - and the woman walking in the mirrors -

_“... hand on the ground, nothing realer than that.”_

If Sylvie ducked her head the _woman_ might get closer. Hot sand scorched her fingers. Someone she loved was dying.

She dropped her eyes and followed her own track scraped into the proving ground.

 

**

 

Porthos jogged rapidly through the rooms, veering and turning through the doors, hurtling down the stone steps and into the boiler room. He stopped, and with hissing effort turned off the flow to the hot water pipes, setting the boiler as low as he dared. Then he walked down the stone-lined hall into the cool of Athos’ chemistry lab. 

Tariq's formula was a complex thing, of separate ingredients concocted separately and combined in precise ratios. Porthos had never truly understood it, not to make from scratch. But Athos had gotten the technique from the old general once, when they were still friends - and Porthos had seen the bottles of agents and reagents and primers on the shelves… He set a mixing bowl out and with hands willed into steadiness measured powders and dusts out by the grain.

Sweat sprang up on his forehead and he stepped back rather than contaminate the ingredients. With a hideous yowl, another black cat sprang into frenzied flight out of the room - he heard from the workshop upstairs a desperate flurry as her sister joined her.

Porthos took a breath, released it, pulled out a second bowl and dripped into it liquids rich in nitrates, trusting the concentrations to be as they were labelled, and when they were thoroughly mixed he folded in the powders with a porcelain spatula. A rustle behind him and he ignored it, kneading the dough and pressing it flat and thin to dry over the low flame of a spirit burner. It was dangerous to treat it this way but he didn't have _time._ He hoped, distantly, that the cats found a new sanctuary somewhere quieter. He twitched the knob of the burner: things were getting too hot.

Carefully, painfully, he watched it bake down.

And from the shelter of a hidden cubby, hand clutched to his bleeding side, Grimaud watched _him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _rozennig_ \- Breton for “my little rose” if I've understood correctly. 
> 
> // _Then he walked down the stone-line hall into the cool of Athos’ chemistry lab._ \- look, this is probably terrible building practice, siting two things that might explode so close together, but I'm writing an action sequence here and, historically, Athos isn't the *best* at Health and Safety.


	53. A Moment of Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank Anathema Device again, for her tireless cheerleading. This story quite literally would not have happened without her.

_Endure,_ Athos had told Samara. _Endure this and in the cool of evening we can leave._

 _What then?_ she asked.

The glass-eyed sun shone down, pitiless. Athos shut his own eyes against it, though the fragile skin of his eyelids did little against it. He was so _tired_ of coming here, so done with it all.

But the fire burned his bones, always. How could he leave?

_It was not just, what you did._

_I am above such questions._

“Get away from him!”

But when he opened his eyes there was only Sylvie, valiant and fierce in bridal white. She knelt over him, hair tangling in streamers around her shoulders, and traced hands around the shape of his skull, gentle as a lover.

“I'm sorry,” he told her.

“Don't be sorry.” She wiped a distracted hand over her forehead, leaving blood, then took his hand. “Just get up.” She wasn't weak but Athos was solid muscle, and limp: he sank down into the sand as she pulled. It grumbled and gurgled underfoot and she blinked, startled. “Was that the pipes?”

_I gave her such a good death, a grand death. What secrets did she find for you at the end?_

“Get up, Athos. I'm taking you to the door and we'll work the rest out from there.”

_So frayed, so very dear, how even can you protect yourself?_

“You gave me back my voice, do you hear me? I was a dumb thing, alone in the dark, and you gave me back joy in music: you saved me.”

“You would have saved yourself,” he muttered, touching her cheek with his cupped hand. “Strong.”

She smiled, eyes bright with tears, and covered his hand with her own. “Stronger together. C'mon, one step and another.”

With his punch-drunken weight across her slender, sturdy shoulders, they tottered like new-born lambs across the sand. The glass sun above flickered, then dimmed. “Evening at last!” Sylvie croaked.

“Something interrupted the gas-lines,” Athos said hoarsely.

 

**

 

 

In the stone-walled chemistry lab below, Porthos released his breath with a sigh. He turned the flame of the spirit burner off with a click and gently, so very gently brushed the uncured powder off the drying board into an iron pot with the fragile end of a feather.

 _And what else must I do?_ he'd asked Tariq once. So young he'd been.So... oblivious.

_Love the law: the sword we forged against wickedness; the shelter we built against the storm. Guard the weak as you would your children. Obey your superior as you would your father._ _Remember that you too are mortal..._

It was the moving air that alerted him, the faintest touch against sweat-damp skin. Porthos ducked and sidestepped, light as a dancer, and Grimaud's juggernaut of a blow flew by him, crashing into the workbench. Porthos backed up, hands curled protectively around the iron pot.

“I wouldn't do that,” he told the man cheerfully, gliding backwards, “it's a funny old thing, this blasting powder. Most explosives, the older they get, the less reliable. Maybe they'll sputter out, or explode sooner than you want… tricky. Tariq's powder now, he ages it like good pepper sausage an’ when it's done you can carry it around in your pocket safe as houses.” He grinned, evaded another massive blow, and began to back down the corridor. “When it's done, that is.” He dipped the feather in the bowl and flicked a few grains of dust at the Ratcatcher's feet where it exploded around him. “This ain't done.”

Grimaud rolled his eyes and reached into his overcoat, retrieving a heavy revolver. He sighted carefully and shot at Porthos’ leg. The Persian swayed to the left, avoiding the shot, then to the right, flicking powder with his magic feather. It didn't fire so he flicked some more, exploding the air around Grimaud's head. Fire burned through his side  - another bullet. It hurt like _anything,_ so he didn't pay it much mind - deep wounds always went numb, first. All Porthos had to do was not drop the powder. Or fall. Or drop the powder _and_ fall, that would really be bad… Rubble crunched underfoot.

“What does it take to make you _die?”_ he snarled at the Ratcatcher in the choking smoke.

Grimaud grinned. “More than you.”

A draft passed across Porthos‘ cheek as he backed down the corridor past the archway that led to the room with pipes and boilers. He stepped faster - best not to mix things that liked to explode with things that… _also_ liked to explode. (He could wonder at Athos’ building practices sometimes, he really could.) The low step of the stairs hit the back of his boot even as Grimaud paused at the little archway, reloading his revolver with fresh bullets. The Ratcatcher glanced into the room, the heavy boilers still running hot even after Porthos had cut the pressure. The scars on his face twisted as his lips moved in a genuine smile. He pointed his gun inside and his finger moved on the trigger.

Porthos scattered a third of the bowl at him, and hoped.

 

**

 

On the brazen side of the door, Aramis shifted one gloved hand out of his pocket, the white kid stained a dark reddy-brown from a friend's blood. He stared at it and turned his wrist slightly, managed to bend the fingers a little - when he tried to lift his arm the strained joints of his shoulders refused to move, all the vigour pulled out of them from his time in the Ratcatcher's basement.

He heard Sylvie shriek from the other side, even as thunder grumbled through Athos’ underground maze. He closed his eyes and prayed.

 

**

 

From scorching brilliance to smothering darkness in a brace of heartbeats. Sylvie clung to the sliding, shaking sand as the earth trembled around them, Athos’ hand in one white-knuckled grip.

The shaking stopped. Into the quiet dark that followed, she heard Aramis call softly, “Sylvie?” At the sound she made he continued, “The door cracked open in the bang, bide a moment and I'll kick it a bit. Just come to the sound of my voice, you know me, can't ever be quiet...” And with Athos silent beside her she crawled and clambered out of the monument the inventor had made to old pain.

She felt Aramis smile as she hugged him in the dark, kissing the top of her head. “I'm quite lost,” the sailor murmured into her hair.

Athos, beside her, said nothing.

“I can lead us to the water's edge,” she croaked.

“Ariadne,” Aramis said, and she grinned at him in the darkness.

And so they went, all three, leaning on each other, stopping in each Stygian room only long enough for Aramis to bawl out Porthos’ name… a thread of sound, a distant _“Aramis!”_ answered them at last, and she felt the lanky sailor sag against her, where she had an arm wrapped around his ribs.

In a music room, Sylvie fumbled along the top of the piano until she found a branched candlestick and struck it alight with a match. Aramis slid his toe under a fallen pistol and kicked it up into her free hand. He shrugged, when she stared at him. “You never know.” He glanced, worried, at Athos standing behind them, eyes blank. “Come on, old man,” he whispered, “almost to the shore...”

The inventor said nothing, but he followed Sylvie as she walked, trailing her steps like a faithful hound.

 

**

 

Porthos blinked eyes crusted with dust and rubble and opened them into darkness. A wet nose was sniffing at him, and as he blinked a raspy tongue scraped at his eyeball. He twitched away from the cat, irritable.  His head ached, and his side burned, and it felt like he'd twisted his ankle. He swore amiably to himself and patted himself down in the darkness. All bits present and reasonably intact - he could work with that. Sighing and growling, he rolled to his feet and felt for the stairs. Someone was shouting, in the distance.

 

**

 

 _"Porthos!"_ Aramis called out again into the shadows, voice carrying like a bell.

 _"I'm here!"_ was the muffled reply. _"I'm coming!"_

One of the trio sobbed when they reached the edge of the black lake, all studded about with pillars, Sylvie could never remember who -

And Grimaud stepped out of the shadows, saturnine, his face drenched in blood. Sylvie's hand came up, gripping the antique pistol. She pursed her lips and pulled the trigger.

The bullet ripped through his shoulder but he kept walking, a storm made flesh, unstoppable.

He held an iron pot in his hand, round-bellied and reminiscent of the bombs anarchists were drawn with, in the newspaper caricatures. He grinned, underneath the blood, and bent to strike a match on his boot. She fired the second barrel and reached his heart, or thought she did, but still he stood.

Suddenly a lean form shot out from behind them: Athos snarled, black shirt torn and blood draggling the hair rank to his face, all that was in his eyes wordless fury. He wrapped his arms around Grimaud and the pair of them fell into the black lake.

The water churned like a witch's cauldron, or a spawning ground of eels, as if a crack had been opened to hell below and devils were pulling each other down in the thresh of their escape.

One shaggy black head came up, gasping, and Sylvie moved - Aramis stepped in her path, face white. “We'd only get in their way,” he said urgently. “There's no merit in us drowning.”

“Damn you!” she cried.

“Yes!”

And they waited, helpless, as the waters thrashed, and shuddered, and stilled.

And waited.

And waited.

Biting her lip, Sylvie sat cautiously on the edge of the lake, where she used to trail her feet in the water, and  felt her old friend lean cautiously against her shoulder. "Tell me everything will be alright," she said quietly.

"Everything will be alright."

She fingered the Wardrobe tag dangling from his collar. “Where have you been all week?” she asked.

Lines showed at the corners of Aramis’ eyes. “Can we pretend I took a jaunt to Marseilles? Just for a little?”

“Of course.” She squeezed his wrist and felt him flinch beside her, loosened her grip instantly and wound her arm instead around his ribs. At the shift of a pebble underfoot she turned her head to see the Persian watching them from an archway, eyes dark and fathomless. Aramis flicked a glance his way, then stared steadfastly out over the lake, at the dying ripples. “I hear it rained, in Marseilles,” she said loudly, cheerfully.

“Rather the quality of a mackerel,” Aramis said thoughtfully, “rain and sun and rain all over.”

“Keeps things interesting.”

“Of course. Sylvie, he's an excellent swimmer.”

“Of course.”

The lake gentled into stillness under the candles’ caressing light. Then Sylvie's breath caught: a ripple. Then another…

 _“Holloa!”_ they heard, then saw, coming through the shadowed pillars Constance and d'Artagnan rowing a swan-necked boat, a lantern hung from its high prow casting dancing light as each managed an oar. “Can we give you a ride out of here?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Some lines paraphrased from Chapter 48. The Stars At Bloody Wars and Chapter 51. Heart Sick
> 
>  _“Rather the quality of a mackerel...”_ \- "Mackerel sky, mackerel sky, not long wet and not long dry."


	54. After and After and After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, all of you who have been with this from the beginning and stuck with it. I hope you enjoyed the reading as much as I enjoyed writing (I certainly learned a lot!) You've been treasures.

_three days later_

 

The Opera House was a song in stone according to some architects, to others a trite mausoleum. It didn't matter. On the roof, at the highest point she could reach, Sylvie stood alone in the autumn evening, under the Lyre of Apollo, and unloosed her hair to the wind and the deepening night.

It was not sound, that warned her, or fragrance, yet - “Athos,” she said, as a knot inside her loosened and she breathed deep for the first time in days.

She felt the Phantom step up behind her, the warmth of him, she held out one hand and felt his fingers twining with hers, his other hand settle on her waist. He still smelled of the water.

“I meant to talk with you before I -”

“If this is a self-sacrificing goodbye then I’d rather not,” she said to the city below.

“You could have died,” he murmured, quiet and implacable, even as his arms gathered her in to his warmth.

“You hit your head,” Sylvie said, very tart. “And Grimaud had a little something to do with it, also. Do you _want_ to leave me?” His breath caught.

“I did not see you coming,” she observed mildly. “A few stray spatters of rain perhaps, the scent of it coming up from dry land… Do you remember how _grumpy_ you were when I moved into the dressing room where you kept your door?”

“Vividly,” he said. “I'm not proud of myself.”

“I once used belly-talking to make de Garouville sound like a toad in rehearsal and I'm not proud of that either.”

He coughed slightly. “An interesting technical exercise, I imagine.”

“I'm a wicked woman,” she sighed. “I never saw you coming, Athos, and now, like a lightning flash, my destiny has changed… I'm not giving you up now.”

“Shall I wonder?” he said tightly. “Shall I ask myself how next I might lead you into death?”

“Before you go,” she said, “before you make any decisions, I've a favour to ask for a friend.”

“Of course,” he said instantly, and she smiled.

 

**

 

“Tavern raconteur, department store clothes mannequin, translator…  cologne spokesman,” Aramis said brightly, watching Athos tap in a long silver needle between the bones of his wrist, one of a score that studded his blotched and swollen arms and shoulders and chest. “What is that for, by the by, giving me an _in_ on the Human Porcupine gig?”

“Heaven preserve a _little_ mystery,” Athos said dryly. “Squeeze my hand.” He waited dispassionately for the weak grip Aramis made, then tested the other.

It was Sylvie’s dressing room they sat in, Aramis perched on the edge of the long low fainting couch while the inventor removed and returned equipment from a formidable medical bag.

“Novel reader for a cigar-rolling workshop!” Aramis declared. “I could do all the voices!”

“You aren't crippled for life,” Athos told him, plucking out the last needle.

“Oh, _I_ know,” Aramis said. His eyes flicked to the side. He'd dreamed of ships last night, great explorers like the _Lion of Susa,_ and the colours of the deep ice in the north, deep blues and greens and shades that had no name, the smack of bitter air against one's face... Not much place there for _only a little_ crippled, he knew. Tch. Here he was, running on again -

“How much opium are you taking?” Athos asked, rotating his wrist and shoulder while watching his face.

“More than is entirely good for me,” the sailor answered, smiling. “Will you chide me on that, Athos?”

The inventor shook his head. Sylvie was right: he did have beautiful eyes.

“It's more than the pain,” Aramis admitted. “In Grimaud's cellar, I lost myself in the dark.” He looked away. “I don't know when I'm getting _me_ back.”

Done for the day, Athos buttoned Aramis back into an oversized shirt and waistcoat and picked up the antique banyan jacket the man had affected in recent days.

“It's fine: I'm just a bit sad.”

Athos bent his head and repacked his case. “Seeds, also, are lost in the dark,” he muttered, looking at nothing. More brisk, he added, “You will be here tomorrow, at 9.”

“Yes, _sir!”_ Aramis replied. He waited in silence, then, as Athos left by the door to the corridor, and the man’s footsteps faded gently away. The great rose-framed mirror set into the wall was hard to avoid looking at, but he tried. He'd been shaved with exquisite precision by d’Artagnan’s valet that morning and the gaunt shadows in his face had nothing to hide behind in the glass.

A moment longer, just a moment, and he'd have his cheer back in place: no sense worrying the children. Just a moment -

A soft shuffle and he looked up quickly. The glass had gone, hidden inside some smoothly built recess. Inside the cavity, the tunnels leading deeper into the building, Porthos Nikbin stood watching him.

“It's just a bit of a sprain,” Aramis said, words tripping like a clear stream over sun-warmed pebbles. “Not to fret. Have you seen my brother and La Bonacieux? I have excessively high hopes that they'll make things work out, somehow. As a couple they are _adorable_ and would doubtless make babies of egregious charm and aptitude -”

“Hush,” Porthos said, stepping into the room, one of the Opera House cats twining about his ankles.

“You weren't meant to _see_ this.”

“But I did. Are you afraid?” Porthos asked, voice light and husky.

“... Yes.”

“Would you like me to stay?” At Aramis’ unhappy look, he added, “For a little while.”

The Frenchman hesitated, then tipped his chin, quick as a bird.

Porthos went down on one knee, close enough to feel Aramis’ warmth. He curled his great hand around the man’s neck, light as a down-feathered wing, and tipped their foreheads together.

“Remember to breathe,” he said.

 

**

 

_one year later_

 

It had become a tradition, in the Paris Opera House, to hold a masked ball the night before a new show opened and the new production of _Tancred_ was no exception.

Bourbon, putting off his trip to Switzerland yet another month, held court in the Dancer's Salon, in a high, padded chair. He coughed discreetly into a snow-white handkerchief and his manservant, inherited from his brother M. Feron, held out a small pail for the soiled fabric. Across the room Catherine de Garouville, hair redder than ever, changed her own discreet cough into a merry muffled titter at a joke unsaid by her new patron. (The manservant said nothing. Rumour had it that he'd inherited half the Opera House from Feron, but he, stoic ex-soldier that he was, stared impassively at every impertinent questioner until they slunk away dispirited.)

Late as the evening was, many of the cast and crew had retired to the less public areas for rest and relaxation. In a dim upper room, warm with the fug of its people, a violin - no, a fiddle, too scratchy and uncouth for a fancy name - sang out a phrase dark as the earth and rhythmic as the sea.  
  
It sang out again as Aramis, down to his shirtsleeves, set one foot on a chair and, straight-backed, waggled his eyebrows at Sylvie in challenge.  
  
The young woman stared at him imperiously from her seat in a shadowed corner, still in the tight leather breeches and full-sleeved shirt of the earlier dress-rehearsal. She did not shift from there, curled in the arms of a man in a red velvet cloak and death’s-head mask, but she raised her small chin and held out her hand until another battered fiddle, dusty with old rosin, was placed in it. Setting it low against her shoulder she answered Aramis’ call with her own rough music. He grinned and they continued, in the ancient tunes of their childhoods, picking up the beat until all were stamping in time and two of the little dancers were whirling about each other, skirts flying. After a particularly cunning, clever phrase Aramis spared a glance, cheeks flushed and sweat-damp hair slipping from its pomade, to a friend across the room. _Did you hear that? Did you see me?_ Porthos met his eyes and waggled his hand noncommittally: _Bet you can do better…_ Aramis’ eyes sparked, and the speed picked up.

High on the Opera House roof, cool air brushed red onto the cheeks of Constance Bonacieux as she boosted her daughter onto the gilt back of the winged statue of Harmony. “Ready?” she asked. Luce-Marie nodded, brimming with excitement. “Deep breath,” Constance instructed her.

The little girl filled her lungs like a pitcher then let out a high, blood-curdling yodel, the kind of cry that carries across mountains. Over the peak of the roof, another cry echoed back: Little Louis hidden in the wings of Poesie with his mother nearby, the Grand Duchess of Ruritania hidden away from her diplomatic duties for a night. She grinned shyly, cheeks red with the cool air.

They traded calls back and forth, the children and the angels, with the lights of Paris below and the stars of heaven above and their mothers laughed with delight.

And the Comte d'Artagnan? He died of an infection taken by his wounds after the fighting, sincerely mourned by Aramis d’Herblay and Constance Bonacieux. His holdings were inherited by his older brother for the most part, but a substantial bequest went to the support of his truest love, and her daughter.

In time the dancer's grief was assuaged, in the person of a young and foolish writer, also of Gascony, whom she scorned desperately at first but slowly came to love. That night, with the children and the angels, was the night she accepted my proposal and agreed to become my wife. It was through her that many of the facts in this case came to me.

I've altered some of the details, of course, to protect the privacy of those still living in Paris. But the bones of the story lie soundly, as the bones of Grimaud did, when they found him and his rings when draining the underground reservoir for repairs.

God is good.

 

Charles de Batz-Castelmore, of Lupiac in Gascony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Charles de Batz-Castelmore wants you to know that he can grow an excellent moustache, thank you. Also, he came from an _entirely different_ part of Gascony from the Comte d'Artagnan and never met him. (But he sounded handsome.)
> 
> // _when I moved into the dressing room_ \- he *may*, in a fit of pique, have tried to convince her the room was haunted by a poltergeist, but that's another story.
> 
> // _I'm not proud of that either.”_ \- Well. Maybe a little.
> 
> // _the garish silk banyan jacket_ \- banyan jackets, popular in the Regency and Early Victorian periods, aren't _exactly_ brocade dressing gowns - they were worn over day clothes, not nightshirts, and tended not to have sashes at the waist - but they had a similar look. Inspired by Eastern and Middle-Eastern styles, they were comfortable and luxurious and popular as male indoor casual wear. Some scholarly gentleman might wear them outside. I can't find any examples after 1850 so yes, Aramis’ outfit is a little eccentric. (I'm prejudiced against smoking jackets, the fashion successor.)
> 
> // Aramis and Sylvie were playing a form of _kan ha diskan,_ a style of music from Brittany. Most of the links I could find were of singers (like this: https://youtu.be/LRg72-bpMeY), but one source (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kan_ha_diskan) says the style was also used by instrumentalists.
> 
> I'll add that regional dialects like Breton weren't much liked by post-revolutionary France - impeded communication and standardised teaching, implied loyalty to the province over the nation, considered a bit bumpkin-ish and probably superstitious - and every time Aramis and Sylvie have dropped into the language, related an anecdote from their childhoods, or hummed a folk tune, they've been branding themselves rude provincials, most cheerfully.


	55. End Notes

What a long strange trip it's been. It is a little eerie to look back on the original character/plot grid I had. Some subplots, like Anne the Concierge’s feud with Louis the Manager, simply vanished, quietly punted away by plots that wanted a little more time; some have unfolded and enriched themselves as time went on. And I had a lot of surprises! Lucie and Revolutionaries? Eh??

For what it's worth, I had the first two acts roughly plotted out, based on two faces of the Phantom, the Musical Inventor and the Obsessed Stalker. The third act, Bomber, was in my outlines a hazy blur of “I'm sure things will work out”. And they did, so that's alright.

 

 **Porthos the Persian**  

Sometimes I took existing characters and played the “what if” game, or inverted a theme, or asked questions that the source material never answers. In this case, canon!Porthos had Gaining Praise and Glory as a strong motivator throughout the show. So… what if he already had it, at the start of my story, or _had_ had it and it didn't work out so well? (As a minor point, given the polygamy practiced in Persia at the time, and how slaves and children-of-slaves were considered culturally, his Awful Dad would not have felt pressure to get him and his mother out of sight so he could inherit… So Persian!Porthos always knew his father and had a different set of childhood traumas.)

On the _Phantom of the Opera_ side, the Persian was one of the most altruistic and uncomplicatedly heroic characters in the book, trying to save Christine simply because she was in trouble while uninterested romantically. And yet - he had been friends with a man who built torture chambers, for his employer/liege, and he never discussed how he felt about what the Little Sultana got up to. So I dug into that a bit in this story, in Porthos’ struggles between maintaining law, rebellion, justice, honour.

The image that crops up in Act 3, of Porthos holding up a great weight, comes from the book version of Porthos’s death scene - holding up part of a collapsing fortress so that Aramis can escape. And it seemed to work with Opera!Porthos’s motif, where he's often stonewalling, hovering on a brink trying to prevent catastrophe, feeling trapped… (poor man).

 

**Anne the Concierge**

In my AU fics I've dealt with Anne and motherhood before so this came quite naturally. Also, book!Girie (not the dance instructor of the popular musical) was henching for the Phantom specifically because he promised to get her kid married to nobility. So… what if she was secretly nobility herself? What if she's got a solid reason for wanting to be unnoticed? I was never going to put the Aramis/Anne romance into this fic but I wanted the pair of them to be besties. Him reminding her of the (inappropriate) husband she's still mourning worked well. Also, canon!Anne gets stuffed into the Damsel in Distress role a great deal, or becomes a distant background figure; I wanted her to have the mobility of insignificance. I wanted Anne to do some of her own hero-ing.

 

**Sylvie and Athos**

I feel a bit bad cutting Sylvie off from the Social Reform/Revolutionary plot-lines; it was a huge part of her plot in The Musketeers. And yet, Christine had nothing to do with such things. And I didn't know, when I started, how much the Communard plot would take up. Eh.

I liked the musicality that I wrote her with, and that I kept up with it throughout the story - that she is comfortable not just singing but playing the violin as her father did, with several instruments, with composing. I drew some of her skills, and her amazing range, from Pauline García Viardot, mezzo-soprano, concert pianist, teacher, and composer. (Also, reputedly, very sweet-tempered as well.) Linky: [ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Viardot ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Viardot)  Sylvie’s journal of folk-lore and personal details was a useful tool for dropping in information.

Athos was half the inspiration for this fic, since I first was watching the Lon Chaney version of _Phantom of the Opera_ while chatting with Anathema Device and thought he’d gloom very appropriately in the angel on the roof scene. (As happens he never got there, but he inspired the story.)

One thing that I found is that requiting the romantic tension and having people sort their emotional shit out two-thirds of the way through the story means I either boil up more catastrophes to drag them back into the centre stage or they step into the background for a bit while someone else gets a bit fraught (Hi, Porthos!). I almost pencilled in a plot about the opera _Samson and Delilah_ and Athos… getting a little insecure, but they were just too bloody sweet playing music together. So most of the “You try my patience: make your choice,” moments were shifted to Porthos and Aramis

Still and all, I had time to develop Sylvie and Athos’s relationship going back for months, two people in depressed funks saving each from death and life. And I like that.

 

**My Lady**

 I usually write a more nuanced version of Milady de Winter, when I write her: far, very far, from a saint, yes, but she’s more interesting to me as someone motivated by a need to survive, who genuinely loved Athos when she married him, who doesn’t really know what _safe and happy_ looks like… evil as a result of trauma not innate diabolism, as it were.  
  
My Lady, on the other hand, was just a piece of work. I fused her with the Little Sultana of Leroux’s book who seems _very_ loosely based on Malek Jahan Khanom, the mother of Naser al Din Shah Qajar  ( [ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malek_Jahan_Khanom,_Mahd-e_Olia ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malek_Jahan_Khanom,_Mahd-e_Olia) ). In the tradition of many gothics and lurid adventure stories set a long time ago or far, far away, a strong, savvy, politically adept historical figure ended up depicted as… cheerfully building torture chambers and murdering her servants for funsies. Um. I’m not exactly guilt-free, here. _Moving on…_  
  
My Lady of this story was actively emotionally manipulative. Though we see her rarely in flashback, I wanted it clear that she left more scars on Athos than the physical.  
  
I actually wrote out a long explanation of why I racebent her to half-Circassian, but the fine details don't really affect the story so I'll sum up with: “Circassian slave girls” had a rep for centuries as the bestest harem inmates ever; there were several shitloads of skeevy racial discourse going on about this in the Western Hemisphere; and oh yes, a genocide perpetrated by the Russian Empire in the 19th century. So… there was a lot of cultural trauma to tap into there, though I expressed little of it in the text. We can assume that as a girl she’d had an appalling life and as an adult precisely zero interest in making things easier for the people around her. As opposed to a person born and raised into privilege who is cruel just because they can be… I dunno. She was still pretty happy with the torturing and the murdering: at some point a person has the choice on whether to rise above trauma or to perpetuate it on others, and the My Lady of this story… made her choice.

 

 **Lucie and Marsac** were not planned for. I threw in Marsac at the end of Act 2, to use the “I'm new” joke and to speak Aramis’s side while he wasn't there. After that, he was colourful and droll - his interactions with Aramis added an interesting thread of jealousy from Porthos and d’Artagnan. Lucie literally turned up because I wanted someone sitting next to D'Artagnan in the prologue and her brother had made a minor appearance as the old manager. And then, well it _might_ be interesting to put Constance at the point of their V-shaped love triangle, and I knew Lucie was brave, so… (Look at me: such organisation, many planning.)

They, and a couple of references to the Commune of Paris, led me into a bloody time in French history.

What gets me, is the Communards had some good aims in there: feeding the poor, educating children… but they got very bloody executing hostages and when they were put down later, there were seas of blood, oceans of it.

 

**Constance and the Little Dancers**

The book opens with a flock of young ballet dancers crowding into the optimal ballerina’s dressing room and gossiping, in delighted fear, about the Phantom. I wanted to preserve the feel of that, more than just Little Meg of Lloyd Webber’s musical (no shade on his adaptation here, he did beautiful work, but his storytelling choices are not mine).

Simone is mostly an OC. I developed her from Pepin’s daughter, of 2.02 An Ordinary Man for a Modern AU I'd been writing, and liked her with Fleur enough that I carried her here to fill out the dancers. (Something awful was always going to happen to Therese, I just didn't know what. I'm sorry, guys. I'm very, very sorry.) I liked to think they had some good times, before the end.

Several of my characters had inverted themes. Constance of the BBC show is a frustrated woman juggling a love of adventure with the constraints of her respectable marriage. So I turned her upside down - she was a talented professional, much admired, earning her own money, yet still dogged by respectability, marriage, constraints. I think she was reluctant to keep Luce-Marie by her for more reasons than just the drain on her time and what, honestly, does that say about her own childhood? Whatever Constance’s choices, though, she will always be fierce and loving.

 

**Aramis the Sailor, of Brittany; d'Artagnan the Comte, of Gascony**

It's mentioned early on in Leroux’s book that the young Vicomte de Chagny is an experienced sailor, but it has little effect on the plot except insofar as his offer of a spot on a Polar Expedition puts a limit on his time with Christine. Similarly, his childhood in Brittany, in an aunt’s house, is part of an explanation of how a Swedish Peasant Girl could be good mates with a young nobleman and lets Leroux use a Breton church, with the ossuary of bones and skulls in the yard, for a colourful scene, but leaves no trace of a distinct subculture of France on his personality. Shrug. Digging into overlooked minutiae is fun for me, even if only a little makes it into the story. Also, Aramis as depicted in the BBC series is both a seasoned serviceman and a little bit foreign, so the Breton sailor was a good way to carry across that flavour.

I borrowed some biographical details from the life of Joseph René Bellot ([ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_René_Bellot ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ren%C3%A9_Bellot)), a 19th century explorer who was the son of a farrier and went to the Ecole Navale in Brest. (It didn't come up, but I was totally prepared to throw in “That time he made an artificial leg for an Inuit” if I needed the colour.)

Since I'd already tucked Constance into La Sorelli the Dancer’s spot, in a lot of ways d'Artagnan was a natural for the Comte, who canonically had A Thing for the young lady. Except I didn't want to age him up (just felt weird) which posed some problems making him the _pater familias._ There was _so much tension_ between d'Artagnan and Aramis as a result of the bastardy, it was simply glorious. And of course, his paying for his parents’ mistakes dovetails rather nicely with Constance’s relationship with her daughter. Our young Comte has a lot of difference from both the Comte de Chagny and the fiery Gascon of The Musketeers, but I liked the way he turned out. He'll grow up well, I think.

 

**The Little Cinder Girl**

_“Born I was to trouble and tears, to suffer with a silent heart_

_But now, in a lightning flash, my destiny has changed...”_

I had pegged Sylvie as a mezzo-soprano, on account of the mellow speaking voice of her actress, Thalissa Teixeira, and because the first mentioned role she has, Siebel, is a mezzo-soprano part. (I'll add that singers with good ranges can shadow other parts - a wide-ranged mezzo could perform a soprano role or a high contralto, though you'd get issues with tone colour: there's an art to balancing voice dynamics.) And then I went through a list of operas with mezzo-soprano or contralto leads, for something for the young lady to star in.

Some of the other options were _Tancred,_ where she'd get to play a young hero in breeches (but I've already forgotten the plot), Gounod's _Sapho_ (where the eponymous poet is inexplicably not gay), and _Samson and Delilah_ by Camille Saint-Saens. Several had appeal (I, for one, would have loved seeing Sylvie in tight Hero Pants with a sword at her hip, and the trust issues of Samson and Delilah could have worked interestingly in complement to Athos-and-Sylvie.) In the end, though, _La Cenerentola's_ Cinderella plot gives instant recognition to the readers - not to be sniffed at in a story with as many moving parts as this.

Also, Rossini's version swaps out the fairy godmother for a human, the ancient and wise tutor Alidoro, who's prepared to disguise himself and sneak around if that's what it takes. There's a parallel with the Phantom himself there, if you squint.

The core of Cinderella is a common premise: one is a miserable drudge on the outside, but a beautiful person inside, or _actually a wizard,_ or from a _special_ bloodline, and _one day_ someone special is going to appear out of nowhere and give the adventure and happy endings that are deserved. Just stick tight: someday your prince will come. It's a powerful draw to the audience - most people feel clumsy and unloved at some point in their lives. Margaret/Marguerite certainly did, and it made her easy meat for Rochefort's wiles. I can't think of many stories where the magical mentor is deceitful and flat evil, come to think of it. Hmm.

 

**Plotlets That Never Flowered**

  * A short sequence where they take refuge in the house Sylvie inherited from her guardian “Mama Valarious”, a decaying hulk of an old mansion. Sylvie vaguely mentions that the woman is buried discreetly in the garden because she was a bit of a heathen and didn't think her requested form of burial would be accepted in a Christian or Civil graveyard. Inside in a small workshop is a half-finished flute carved out of a long femur… (Sylvie and Athos having more in common than a love of music.)
  * Constance and Ninon the Dance Mistress dancing a _pas de deux_ while one or both was _en travesti_ \- I just thought it would be pretty.
  * A long-running feud between M. Bourbon and the house staff, headed by Anne Mauricia. Anne was quite thoroughly distracted in Act II, and it never took off.
  * Sylvie demanding or begging a favour from Richelieu during the investigation of Aramis. It turns out Richelieu remembers her father, and a famous violin solo he used to play, “The Nightingale”, and asks her to play it for him.
  * I did actually write the scene where Porthos asks Aramis if he really murdered Victor Amadeus, but it killed the forward momentum and in the end I preferred some ambiguity to Marsac's story.
  * And a duet between Porthos and Aramis, with a tar (plucked string instrument) and a violin tuned to a classical Iranian mode, also for the pretty. (It totally happened inside the timeskip of the last chapter, though.)



Who knows, I might pick one of them up into a side story, sometime.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been posting some of my research links [here,](https://thelaithlyworm.tumblr.com/tagged/musketeer-phantom-monster-mash%0A) if anyone's interested. 
> 
> Or here: https://thelaithlyworm.tumblr.com/tagged/musketeer-phantom-monster-mash%0A
> 
> Pretty pictures and that.


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